[Clinical competence of emergency clinicians in the management of asthmatic exacerbation in children].
In spite of its high prevalence, asthma continues to be undertreated worldwide, and a physician's deficient knowledge seems to be the main reason.


OBJECTIVE
To measure the degree of physician's knowledge about classification and treatment of asthma exacerbations in children, and to identify physician's factors that might be involved.


METHODS
A prospective, observational, cross-sectional and analytical study was carried out. A 13 item questionnaire to evaluate the knowledge about asthma exacerbations was constructed and validated. This instrument was applied to clinicians working at emergency rooms in four secondary-level hospitals.


RESULTS
Forty doctors answered the questionnaire, with a median of 38.5% correct answers. Age, time-span working as specialist, years working at emergency rooms, number of courses attended, number of papers on asthma read, and number of asthma patients seen in a weekly basis did not influence the percentage of correct answers. Variables influencing the degree of knowledge were: being pediatrician (38.5% correct answers vs 23.1% in other specialties, p = 0.035) and working at night (50.0 vs 30.8% in other shift p = 0.031). A multiple lineal regression analysis corroborated the influence of these last two variables on the percentage of correct answers.


CONCLUSIONS
The questionnaire proved to be a useful tool that fulfilled expected goals. Percentage of correct answers was low among participating physicians, which indicated the need of educative intervention maneuvers to improve medical management of asthma exacerbation.
Zavala Arenas
Jesús Arturo
JA
Centro de Investigación Educativa y Formación Docente Siglo XXI, Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, México, DF. jesus.zavala@imss.gob.mx
Furuya
María Elena Y
ME
Vargas
Mario H
MH
D001249:Asthma / Q000628:therapy*; D002648:Child; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004635:Emergency Medicine; D006801:Humans; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires