Special Interest Group
Audit tool for Inhaler SusQI projects
Hi there,
We’ve been running an inhalers SusQI like Dr Munro, and I’m sharing one of the tools that we used and the prescriber tool that we created – if anyone wants to use these or a version of them in their own healthcare facilities, they are welcome to.
Attachments:
- simple audit proforma that can be used for baseline assessment with patients
- Poster to inform staff who prescribe inhalers
We also ran a survey of prescribers to assess their knowledge and had 190 responses in our area. We are currently speaking to paediatrics about adapting it and running a similar survey in paediatrics. If anyone would like to use the survey for a baseline assesssment, please let me know.
Best wishes,
Sarah
Discussion (2)
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Thanks so much for sharing this, Sarah, it looks really practical and useful. I wondered whether you had considered including a question about returning inhalers to pharmacy for disposal, whether or not there is a recycling scheme? We know that MDIs usually have some residual propellant and that this can be destroyed by high temperature incineration (used for medicines waste), which is important for reducing the carbon footprint. Frances
Thanks for the comment Frances. I agree that disposal is really important. I learnt while doing this project that the propellant gas from MDIs can be disposed of appropriately.
It also sounds like one of the main limitations is a lack of facilities actually taking on the recycling. GSK has a scheme, but they would not implement a recycling point at our hospital as they said they were at capacity according to our resp pharmacist (not sure what capacity is, but seems it is not as high as their production, does this count as green wash?), although this was a couple of years ago so perhaps there is positive progress since then.
We do have a question on the survey for patients about whether they know how to dispose of their inhalers – by returning them to pharmacy, and one of the comments that I’ve had from staff who took our staff survey is that they did not know about this and will now do it with their own inhalers.