Be ready to challenge the status quo on World Asthma Day

Today is World Asthma Day and an opportunity to encourage your patients and colleagues to adopt the positive approach being promoted by the Asthma Right Care social movement.

This initiative, led by the International Primary Care Respiratory Group (IPCRG), prompts clinicians to challenge the status quo with conversations about patients’ over reliance on short-acting beta2 agonists (SABAs). 

A new mobile friendly slide rule launched by the campaign enables prescribers in GP surgeries or pharmacies to ask patients how well they feel they control their asthma and how many SABA inhalers they think it is acceptable to use  in a year.  These conversation starters allow patients to come to their own conclusions about their over-reliance on SABAs. The slide rule can also be used to start conversations with colleagues about SABA overuse. 

Darush Attar-Zadeh, Respiratory Lead Pharmacist Barnet CCG and PCRS Executive Committee member, says: “We want to make as much noise about Asthma Right Care as possible.  Asthma doesn’t get the noise that diabetes, heart disease or cancer gets, yet people are dying from it.

“Five years on from the National Review of Asthma Deaths (NRAD), providing strict recommendations that are important to adhere to, not much has changed. The difference with Asthma Right Care is that we are trying to change people’s thinking with positive messages of hope to get both patients and clinicians to understand what ‘asthma right care’ is as opposed to ‘asthma wrong care’.”

Dr Katherine Hickman, PCRS Executive Committee member, adds: “For too long now we have accepted sub-standard care of our patients with asthma. This has to change. Asthma Right Care is an opportunity to start to make some noise, focus on what we can do not what we can't, challenge the status quo, rip up the rule book and begin to rock the boat. Let's start to do the right thing, raise the standard of care for our patients that they so rightly deserve and give them their lives back.” 

On World Asthma Day you could also:

• Book a place at the PCRS Respiratory Conference 2019 where Darush will be talking in more detail about the Asthma Right Care movement and how clinicians can become SABA guardians
• Download Asthma Guidelines in Practice  – A PCRS Consensus article which provides clarity on aspects of diagnosis, management and monitoring of asthma that are uncertain due to differences between current national guidelines.