The following is the summary of “Implementing the Patient Needs in Asthma Treatment (NEAT) questionnaire in routine care: a qualitative study among patients and health professionals” published in the January 2023 issue of Pulmonary medicine by Salandi, et al.
A significant portion of asthma patients reports having unmet medical needs. One reliable method of doing so is using the Patient Needs in Asthma Treatment (NEAT) questionnaire. In this study, we aimed to learn how clinicians perceived NEAT’s usefulness and how both patients and clinicians felt it could be used in everyday care. Between February and September of 2021, 19 asthmatic patients and 21 medical professionals participated in telephone-based qualitative interviews (i.e., general practitioners, pneumologists, health professionals in pulmonary rehabilitation, and medical assistants).
MAXQDA was used for both deductive and inductive content analysis on the transcribed interviews. The potential benefits of adopting NEAT to guide therapeutic decisions are clear to health professionals. However, healthcare providers were reluctant to embrace NEAT as a standard practice in outpatient settings, primarily due to time constraints. Patients and healthcare providers alike valued NEAT implementation more highly when it was used for patient education (i.e., in Disease Management Programs [DMPs] or pulmonary rehabilitation) since this provided more possibilities to address any unmet requirements. Both patients and doctors agreed that the questionnaire would be more helpful if used for the first time after the patient’s initial diagnosis (e.g., when the treatment regime is found rather than at time of initial diagnosis).
It is possible that NEAT might be utilized twice in the context of DMPs and pulmonary rehabilitation, once before and once after patient education, to aid in patient-centered planning and evaluation. Patients and medical staff see the potential benefits and viability of using the NEAT in educational settings (such as during disease management plans or pulmonary rehabilitation). The time has come to conduct a feasibility study in normal healthcare settings.
Source: bmcpulmmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12890-022-02293-4