PROACTIVE, NURSE-RUN ASTHMA CARE IN GENERAL-PRACTICE REDUCES ASTHMA MORBIDITY - SCIENTIFIC FACT OR MEDICAL ASSUMPTION - DISCUSSION

Nurse-run asthma care in general practice in the United Kingdom has be come extremely common, particularly since the introduction of the 1990 contract for general practitioners, but there have been few controlle d trials of the clinical effectiveness of this approach to asthma care . A study attempted to compare the outcome of asthma care over three y ears in two similar practices when one practice provided proactive, nu rse-run care and the second continued with a traditional (reactive) ap proach, and to examine the process of care when such changes were intr oduced. Despite the investment of considerable resources, statisticall y significant differences could not be shown between the two practices using a comprehensive variety of outcome measures. This could be inte rpreted as meaning that nurse-run asthma care may be ineffective, but the negative outcome is much more likely to reflect difficulties in th e manner in which the intervention practice sought to develop its serv ice and in the research process. There were extensive methodological p roblems leading to a potential type 2 error. A randomized controlled t rial of nurse-run asthma care would now be difficult to conduct, and s o it may be necessary to accept nurse-run asthma care without definiti ve proof of its clinical effectiveness.