Individualized Care Strategies

Easy-to-obtain clinical variables can be used to determine the severity of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) exacerbations and guide its management. Importantly, the patient’s past medical history must be considered in the differential diagnosis as a potential cause requiring concomitant treatment.¹

Shared decision-making (SDM) is a conversational process in which the patient and healthcare provider come to an agreement over healthcare decisions. SDM is one of many models for decision making within the patient/clinician partnership. SDM requires more involvement from the patient than other approaches, in that healthcare providers share the options, all necessary and available information about treatments and outcomes, and then the patient chooses based on their preferences. The COPD action plan is a tool to support such a conversation and promote patient involvement.^1,2

The COPD action plan includes information for daily assessment of COPD symptoms and actions for each level of symptom severity. This plan should be completed with the patient, as well as discussed and updated as needed at each visit. The American Lung Association COPD action plan can be accessed in both English and Spanish.²