Abstract
The rising importance of educating asthma patients about their medication and devices and how to use them and the impact of this knowledge on controlling the disease and improving the quality of life has attracted great interest from researchers in assessing the current situation of dealing with the disease in their community. The purpose of this study is therefore to assess the knowledge of asthma patients about their medication and devices, highlight the problems in the advice provided by health-care providers to asthma patients and study the potential impact of education on the management of asthma. The study was also designed to encourage health-care providers to provide appropriate education for patients and develop an educational program for the management of asthma. A cross-sectional study was conducted using two types of questionnaire, the first directed at asthmatic patients to assess their knowledge and the other directed at health-care providers to assess the challenges, which they faced in advising patients. The results showed that patients' awareness of asthma was of a medium level. Moreover, the level of challenges faced by health-care providers when advising patients to teach them how to use asthma medications and devices was also of a medium level. The most significant problems were time and lack of patient interest. The findings explained that asthmatic patients in Hail region need improvement in their level of awareness about the use of asthma medications and devices in order to achieve a higher degree of disease control, which will be achieved through the development and implementation of an educational program by health-care providers.