A new paper entitled ‘Using a narrative approach to enhance clinical care for patients with asthma‘ has been published online in the journal Chest. The paper was authored by Dr Helen Owton, previously of De Montfort University and now a lecturer at the Open University, Dr Jacqueline Allen-Collinson, Reader in the School of Sports Science at the University of Lincoln, and Professor Niro Siriwardena from CaHRU.
The paper describes an approach to foster better patient self-care in patients with asthma by enabling clinicians to empower individuals to take more control of their condition by enhancing patient-clinician communication and relationship through patients’ stories. This is based on previous work from Drs Owton and Allen-Collinson on patient narratives in asthma and work on the consultation from Prof Siriwardena.
The discussion paper, published in the Topics in Practice Management section of the journal, describes the history of narratives in asthma, outlines the evidence on how narratives can provide insights into how people perceive and manage their asthma, and discusses how these ideas might be applied. The paper finally discusses how these notions might be practically implemented in the clinical consultation and how this has potential to improve outcomes for people with asthma.