Hospital

Asthma was one of the top 20 diagnoses presenting to emergency departments in Australia in 2016/7. In this topic summary, people with severe asthma tell of their experiences once they had decided to seek treatment for an acute episode. Usually this involved turning up at a hospital emergency department. For most of the people in our study hospital admission followed the emergency department presentation.

However, not all people with severe asthma had been hospitalised.

For some people with severe asthma their experience was dismissed at emergency triage and other stages of the hospitalisation process. People with severe asthma explained that they know their disease and their signs and symptoms may not necessarily be what medical staff learn or read in text books.

It is known that a small proportion of people with severe exacerbations of asthma either stop breathing or are at risk of stopping breathing, which is life-threatening and needs artificial mechanical ventilation via a breathing tube attached to a ventilator. People we talked to explained that some treatments could only be accessed in hospitals, such as intravenous infusions. As not all services are available at all hospitals, some people in the study had to be transferred from the original hospital they presented to for ongoing care.

In terms of the overall hospital experience itself, there was a range of experiences ‑ some people simply didn’t like being there, whilst others appreciated the “safety net” if anything went wrong.

Some people with severe asthma did not see the hospital as being helpful in their recovery. They mentioned the possibility of infection, as well as allergens such as cleaning agents and perfumes applied by the staff.

Some people in the study only experienced hospitals as outpatients, preferring to be managed at a clinic, but appreciated that the hospital was there ‘in case’.