우리나라에서 학교 중심의 소아천식관리사업의 적용가능성과 발전 방향: 일부 학교의 시범사업 평가결과를 중심으로

초록

Purposes: The objective of this study was to develop a management program for Korean elementary school students suffering from asthma, which would be based on the Australian Asthma-Friendly Schools (AFS) program. Methods: On the basis of the AFS program, we designed a 6-month pilot project for asthmatic students in two elementary schools in a rural area and one elementary school in an urban area of Korea. The pilot project consisted of the following processes: identifying students with asthma in a school, educating school staffs and the parents of an asthmatic child, registering those with asthma, and installing emergency kits for asthma attacks in school health rooms. In order to evaluate these processes, group discussions were held between project team members and school staffs in each area. In addition, we conducted a postal survey of 144 households having an asthmatic child. Results: The screening process adopted in this program resulted in the early diagnosis in asthma; however, it needs to be evaluated economically due to expensive diagnostic test for asthma. For the school nurses, asthma lessons were evaluated as being very helpful for their tasks, while teachers tended to take less interest in the program with only 45% of all teachers attending these lessons. Almost all participating parents reported that such lessons would be beneficial for the care of their child, even though only 24.2% of the survey respondents (122 households) attended the lessons. Installing emergency kits in school health rooms was regarded as a key feature of this project. The introduction of a register card containing more specific health records of asthmatic students was considered necessary to replace the existing list of students with asthma. Conclusion: This study has merit in that a Korean asthma-friendly schools program was developed for the first time, despite the many obstacles to such programs becoming more common.

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