Nurse-led COPD Self-management Intervention

The skills and the knowledge necessary in COPD management and interventions required to develop this skill have conceptualized as self-management. The complex structure of COPD self-management includes medication compliance, smoking cessation, maintaining and increasing exercise capacity, regulating nutrition, healthy lifestyle changes, vaccination and symptom management. According to the GOLD (2017) report, copd self-management cannot be achieved only with didactic teaching. Skill acquisition, behavior change and motivational interventions should be applied with education. Among these interventions, action plans are among the tools frequently used in preventing tele-health COPD attacks. Action plans can be used effectively in COPD to prevent attacks, symptom management and reduce the risk of anxiety / depression. One objectives of self-management is to reduce use of health care. Symptom management; It has been stated that it is effective in reducing hospitalization and days of hospitalization especially in patients with COPD diseases. In studies involving self-management in COPD, self-management interventions increase health-related quality of life, control symptom, reduce the risk of anxiety / depression, increase self-efficacy, reduce respiratory hospital stays, reduce severity and duration of attacks, and reduce mortality at low impact. It is stated that the interventions made in the GOLD (2017) report provide improvements for health-related quality of life and patient outcomes. Because of self-management is a multi-component concept, variety in type of intervention and follow-up make it difficult to reach generalizable evidence. Although many health professionals work with patients with COPD, self-management interventions are known to be carried out mostly by nurses or by multidisciplinary groups involving nurses. This study is an example of applicable self-management intervention in terms of disease information and general management, rational drug use, symptom control training and evaluation with medium-term monitoring. It can contribute to literature in terms of determining the effect of nurse-managed self-management intervention.