The Primary Care Respiratory Society (PCRS) recognises that short-term respiratory admissions can be reduced but not always entirely avoided. These admissions occur when patients require hospital-based stabilisation, diagnosis or treatment which is not otherwise available to them in primary care. In line with the 10-Year health plan for England: Fit for the future, PCRS supports patient care in the community and care delivered closer to home.
With the introduction of a new Maintenance and Reliever Therapy (MART) license for children of 6 - 11 years old, PCRS has provided a summary of the new license and who it is appropriate for.
In this position statement we outline the background, key issues and provide key steps on how to make a firm diagnosis of asthma in this important group.
2024 marked a pivotal change in the management of asthma in the UK with the publication of a joint British Thoracic Society (BTS), National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) guideline. This guideline, ‘Asthma: diagnosis, monitoring and chronic asthma management’, has the potential to be the paradigm shift that is needed to improve asthma care in the UK.In the 2024 BTS/NICE/SIGN guideline1 there is a clear statement that says:
A personal perspective on using the plan on a page tool to support the development of FeNO services. An article on using the FeNO Plan-on-a-Page tool, with accompanying working example and editable template.
Corinne Beirne, Advanced Nurse Practitioner and Amanda Roberts, from PCRS’s patient reference group, discuss what constitutes a good asthma review from a patient’s perspective.
Sharing asthma knowledge using storytelling
Over the past 20-years, there has been an increased focus on the use of newer biologic medication in people with severe asthma that is not controlled with usual asthma medication. Although there are currently six biologics (January 2025) licensed for use in severe asthma, estimates suggest that of the 60,000 people potentially eligible for biologics in England, only 8,000-10,000 are on these treatments.
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The mMRC (Modified Medical Research Council) Dyspnoea Scale is used to assess the degree of baseline functional disability due to dyspnoea.
The PCRS Greener Respiratory Healthcare Quality Improvement (QI) toolkit has been developed to support HCPs working in the primary care setting to understand and evaluate the environmental impact of their clinical practice, identify ways to reduce this impact, set goals and priorities and evaluat
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