This study involves training GPs and nurses to recognize that patients differ in terms of asthma characteristics, such as symptoms and triggers, as well as personal attributes and lifestyles. The programme teaches professionals to work with patients to improve their asthma management; this involves helping people with asthma to observe themselves and their own actions, and learn from these, to support self-help behaviours, integrating these into their daily routines. The programme emphasizes good communication skills and working in partnership with patients, as well as up-dating doctors and nurses in current best practice for treating asthma. It is based on a programme successfully developed with American office based paediatricians, which resulted in greater parent satisfaction with asthma visits to doctors, and better asthma symptom control for patients. We wish to modify this American programme to make it more suitable for UK doctors, nurses and patients. We have also included a component into the programme to identify what exactly is effective in terms of how it impacts on clinician attitudes, beliefs and behaviour before delivering it more widely. The success of the project is evaluated not only by testing whether it improves the medical care and medical outcomes of patients of the health professionals taking part, but also by measuring whether patients are more satisfied with their consultations for asthma if their doctor or nurse has taken part in the programme. UK (http://www.sign.ac.uk/) evidence-based guidelines recommend helping those with asthma to control their symptoms and improve their quality of life through provision of education and individualised, written action plans. Our aim is to carry out a prospective, cluster randomised trial in general practices in Aberdeen and Glasgow, Scotland, to assess the impact of an educational intervention targeted at training practice nurses and general practitioners (GPs) in patient-centred asthma care; specifically in how to help patients develop asthma self regulation skills. The intervention is modified from a programme successfully implemented with American office based paediatricians, found to be effective in an US paediatric asthma population in terms of clinical outcomes and parent satisfaction (1).