Dyadic illness experience of severe asthma patients and partners
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Illness experience of patient-partner dyads where patients live with severe persistent asthma and their partners are their main informal carers.
IRAS ID
178161
Contact name
Judit Varkonyi-Sepp
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Derby
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 2 months, 18 days
Research summary
There is growing research evidence that patients and their partners adjust to and cope with living with chronic conditions as a unit, as opposed to experiencing it as two separate individuals in a relationship. Such research specifically in severe, difficult-to-control asthma however is limited. Asthma is a disease with symptoms of wheezing, coughing, chest tightness and breathlessness but its underlying causes can be variable. Some patients with asthma have disease that does not respond well to conventional therapies, thus their asthma is defined as 'difficult-to-control' and some of these patients do not show detectable biological alterations from healthy people although their symptoms are severe. There is some research evidence that asthmatic patients might experience breathlessness when they are distressed even when their airways are normal. Living with chronic illness has been shown to be stressful and to place emotional burden on both the patients and their partners. It is therefore important to understand how patients and partners experience living with severe difficult-to-control asthma and gain insight whether this disease poses similar challenges on patients and partners as in other chronic diseases. If so, recommendations from research in other chronic conditions that healthcare should support patients and partners together as a unit in coping with chronic conditions might be relevant to severe difficult-to-control asthma. The current study is a Health Psychology Masters Course Independent Research Project examining the experience of living with severe, difficult-to-control asthma in patients and their partners by interviewing them together in a one hour to ninety minute session and then analysing the anonymised text transcript from all the interviews together looking at commonalities from participant experiences. Approximately 4-6 couples, recruited from the Southampton General Hospital Severe Asthma Clinics, will be interviewed.
REC name
East Midlands - Leicester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/EM/0245
Date of REC Opinion
1 Jun 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion