The evidence-based guideline of nursing consultation session for children with atopic dermatitis

Abstract

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is one of the most common chronic dermatological diseases. It has affected up to a fifth of schoolchildren and their caregivers. It will alter not only children’s physical health, but also worsen the quality of life among children and their family. This global public health problem also increased the financial and social burden to healthcare system in the past decades.

Educational intervention has been proved to be an adjunct to current treatment to restore the altered quality of life and skin condition effectively. It could be simply carried out by trained nurses in the routine practice to educate patients about proper AD management. However, such intervention is seldom mentioned in the local setting. Therefore, it is essential to establish an effective evidence-based guideline of nursing consultation in order to enhance patients’ clinical outcomes.

The objectives of this study are to search and synthesize current literatures systematically in educational interventions for AD children for reducing disease severity and improving quality of life, to assess the implementation potential of identified educational interventions, to develop an evidence-based guideline of nursing consultation for providing better skin care to the AD children and to develop the implementation and evaluation plan the proposed intervention.

Nursing consultation session for AD children is proposed in this study. The target population and setting are AD children aged from 4-16 years attending to one of the local public dermatological outpatient clinics. Evidence and relevant data are yielded from eight high-quality studies. The potential of implementing the proposed intervention is assessed based on the transferability of the findings, feasibility and the cost-benefit ratio. An evidence-based guideline is eventually developed with the best evidence-based findings. At last, an implementation plan and evaluation plan for the proposed guideline are well designed.

This evidence-based guideline is designed to improve the quality of life and reduce the severity of skin condition of AD children. It is recommended to establish to all dermatological outpatient clinics locally.