Pharmacists Need Effective Educational Tools to Train Asthma Patients on Correct Inhaler Technique
Pharmacists have become more active in patient care, and the benefits of pharmacists counseling patients about medications have been recognized.
Pharmacists are available not just when patients obtain their first inhaler, but also when they obtain refill inhalers, giving pharmacists the ideal opportunity to assess and educate their patients on an ongoing basis regarding correct inhaler technique. However, very few pharmacists review and educate their customers on correct inhaler technique due to lack of time, low confidence or the perception that their advice may not be welcome.
Although many studies have shown that health care professionals can be trained to demonstrate the correct use of inhalers correctly, several studies have demonstrated that inhaler technique demonstration skills decline within a few weeks or months after the training/intervention. For example, Resnick and colleagues showed that, of house staff physicians educated to achieve correct pMDI technique, only 26% had correct technique when reassessed 2 months later.
Many pharmacists and other health care professionals involved in asthma management have poor inhaler technique, and without specific education, they will continue to lack the skills necessary to play an effective role in educating patients about correct inhaler technique.
Most of the Pharmacists read the written patient instructions with the medication and try to demonstrate the inhaler technique to the new patients, which leads to many critical mistakes and forgetting some essential steps that may cause patients to follow the same mistakes eventually leading to poor inhaler technique.
Educating the Pharmacist with the help of an interactive online independent educational tool like “How to use inhalers” at www.use-inhalers.com can overcome many problems like inadequate source of inhaler education, retraining issues, lack of time issue etc and Pharmacists can achieve optimal inhaler technique demonstration skill with better confidence and accuracy.
CPE Course
Pharmacists can now enroll in our interactive CPE course and earn credits. Some highlights of this course:
- Separate courses on MDI and DPI inhalers
- Total of 15+ inhalers covered
- You will get free access to patient education tools
- Save your time and cost by taking this online training
Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov