[Asthma education and self-management: inevitable requirements to enhance disease control and achieve the goals for long-term asthma management].

The patient should be the primary manager of chronic disease guided and coached by a doctor and healthcare workers. The challenge now is to recognise that establishing patient-provider partnerships is an essential step in helping patients to learn and manage chronic illnesses like asthma. This article focuses on what is known about asthma patient education and on reducing the barriers to effectively applying what is known. Whereas traditional patient education offers information and technical skills, self-management education teaches problem-solving skills. A central concept in self-management is self-efficacy, the confidence to carry out a behavior necessary to reach a desired goal (outcome-efficacy). Effective teaching on chronic diseases must be based more closely on the findings of behavioural research. Therefore, self-management education has to become an integral part of high-quality care in asthma.