Pharmacist Care for Reactive Airway Disease
- Amit K. Ghosh, MD
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Department of Medicine
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minn
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
To the Editor: Dr Weinberger and colleagues1 found that patients with asthma who received pharmaceutical care experienced more breathing-related ED visits. It is possible that patients' interactions with the pharmacists resulted in constant reminder of the morbidity of uncontrolled asthma and resulted in a need to seek definitive treatment and further reassurance. The nature of the conversation with the pharmacist could have provided the patients with reinforcement of disease-related symptoms and increased reassurance of their own understanding of the disease. In any event, results suggest that patient-physician interaction may not be adequate to educate patients about chronic disease. Similar trends of improved care of heart failure management with the involvement of pharmacists have been previously reported.2
Despite physicians' best intentions, patients may delay in the initiation of therapy and may not gain adequate control of chronic symptoms. Such a phenomenon has been described as clinical inertia and results …
