Asthma Right Care Strategy

IPCRG's activities in asthma are steered by eight people-centred statements.  We are working towards building a quality improvement programme that will offer primary care teams a set of resources to enable them to take small steps to improve their practice in their chosen area.   The eight statements are divided into four areas:

  • Diagnosis
  • Management
  • Review
  • When control is poor

Listed below are the eight statements with a link to the tools we are working on, or have already completed to assist improvement in that area.

People with asthma deserve...

Diagnosis

1. A timely, accurate and formal/objective diagnosis of their asthma by their primary health care team.

Since mid 2022, we have been working with an international group of primary care colleagues with expertise in asthma diagnosis to develop a new teaching and learning tool based on the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle.  The film below is a timelapse film showing the events of a 3 hour workshop.  We are currently writing up the outcomes into a desktop helper.

Management

2. To receive adequate inhaler treatment for their asthma according to the best practice recommendations for their level of disease severity.

3. To participate in the choice of treatment for their asthma, including the decision between different options of inhaler devices

4. To have appropriate inhaler technique training and to agree an asthma action plan shared with their health care providers.

5. Counselling and treatment if they are tobacco dependent, a yearly flu vaccination and COVID-19 vaccination 

Review

6. Follow-up appointments at acceptable intervals for the management of their asthma that must include structured assessment of control, wellbeing & evaluation of future risk.

7. That their difficult to manage asthma is evaluated by their primary health care team following a structured approach in order to identify any solvable questions before they are referred to secondary care.

When control is poor

8. To have easy and timely access/referral to a primary or secondary health care professional who is skilful in asthma management whenever their symptoms cannot be self-managed or when their asthma cannot be managed in primary care.