Understanding caregiver perspectives on challenges and solutions to pediatric asthma care for children with a previous hospital admission: a multi-site qualitative study

Objective Pediatric hospital admissions for asthma provide an opportunity to trigger a review of the current management with an aim of preventing readmissions. However, caregiver voices on how best to improve care are missing. Methods As part of a larger, mixed methods cohort study, we identified caregivers of children aged 3-18 years who had an index hospital admission to a tertiary pediatric, mixed adult and pediatric, or regional hospital in Victoria, Australia, between 1st September 2017 and 31st August 2018 with a discharge diagnosis of "Asthma" or "Wheeze" based on International Classification of Disease-10 coding. We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 39 caregivers. We used content analysis to identify themes from the data. Results Caregivers identified both challenges associated with asthma care for children with a previous hospital admission as well as solutions to improve care and potentially reduce readmissions. Key challenges included: unclear pathways for follow up care, inconsistent advice, lack of personalized management, delays in getting a diagnosis, delays in the prescription of a preventer medication, and difficulty accessing primary care during exacerbations. Follow up with an "asthma specialist", early access to a trial of preventer medication, personalized Written Asthma Action Plans and increased access to and quality of community-based asthma support services were identified as key solutions. Conclusions Caregivers have identified several potential solutions that could be implemented to improve care and possibly reduce pediatric asthma hospital readmissions. The challenge now is to co-design, embed and evaluate these in healthcare systems. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at publisher's website.