Guidance and Best Practice

Practical things you can do locally to help improve asthma outcomes.

Patients with respiratory symptoms and disease deserve a correct diagnosis and correct guideline driven care that is standardized, patient focused, delivered by a Health Care Professional (HCP) with suitable training and experience, at a site and within an appropriate timeframe to meet their needs. Sadly, patient groups such as the British Lung Foundation (BLF) and Asthma UK have recognised that too often this is not the case.

Inhaler devices may seem simple to use but they are often used incorrectly by patients and healthcare professionals alike.

Fran Robinson talks to a patient who has had asthma all her life, feels that annual asthma reviews are a waste of time (except when they are conducted by PCRS members). In this article she explains why and Ren Lawlor, Senior Lecturer,  Advanced Nurse Practitioner,  Department of Adult Nursing and Paramedic Science, University of Greenwich reflects on this patient’s experiences.

a PCRS pragmatic guide

PCRS welcome this further update of the long established, comprehensive and highly respected BTS/SIGN guideline for asthma. We are pleased that today BTS/SIGN have announced that future UK-wide guidance for the diagnosis and management of chronic asthma will be jointly produced by BTS, SIGN and NICE, something PCRS has campaigned for (Keeley & Baxter 2018).

The fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) test measures the level of NO in the exhaled breath and provides an indication of eosinophilic inflammation in the lungs. 

We have guidelines on asthma from two different sources in the UK – BTS/SIGN and NICE. The British Asthma guideline from BTS/SIGN was first published in 2003 and is well established, respected and comprehensive. NICE decided to develop first a guideline on diagnosis and monitoring in asthma, and then a guideline on asthma management, and they finally came together in a single published guideline in November 2017.