Patient information from BMJ

Asthma in adults: questions to ask your doctor

Last published:Aug 30, 2022

If you have been diagnosed with asthma you might want to ask your doctor some of these questions:

• How bad is my asthma?

• Will I need to measure my peak flow at home? If so, how often?

• Do I need to take medicine regularly to prevent the symptoms?

• When do I use a preventer? When do I use a reliever?

• Do I need to use inhalers or take tablets, or both? Will I be shown how to use an inhaler correctly?

• What are the side effects of asthma medicines?

• Will I need to take steroids?

• I've heard that steroids can give you long-term side effects. Will these happen to me? Do the side effects happen only with steroid tablets or can they happen with steroid inhalers?

• What should I do when I have an asthma attack?

• How often will I need to use my reliever inhaler? What should I do if I'm using it more than that?

• What happens if my reliever inhaler doesn't seem to be helping?

• How often will you want to see me to check my asthma?

• Will I need to take more medicine as I get older?

• Is there anything I can do to stop my children getting asthma?

• Are there any jobs I can't do because of my asthma?

• I know that people can die from an asthma attack. Could that happen to me? What can I do to reduce the chance of this happening?

• Is there anything you think may be triggering my asthma attacks?