Abstract
back(50) Medicine and Geriatrics Inhaler Technique Enhancement Program
Mr. Ming-Ming Matthew FU1, Mr. Chi-Kwan CHAN1
1CMC, Hong Kong SAR
Background
Effective inhaler treatment is crucial in the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and studies report that patients receive suboptimal benefits from the inhaler treatment is associated with inadequate and incorrect inhaler instruction by health care professionals. A program involves inhaler education to all eligible in-patients COPD patients by a well-trained nursing staff was organized in medical department. An individual, face-to-face education session with real-time correction on the spot is conducted by ward nurses to enhance inhaler technique of all in-patient COPD patients.
Objective
(1) To strengthen the inhaler technique education to all in-patient COPD patients.
(2) To enhance all nurses’ knowledge and competency on providing inhaler education to patient by the method of “train the trainer”.
Methodology
A pretest-posttest design was employed to discover nurses’ knowledge and inhaler skill changes after a hand-on education lecture to the trainer. The numbers of educated COPD patient was collected and their skill level was observed by face-to-face technique assessment.
Result
20 nurses’ trainers were trained and there was improved mean score of 2.25 (p<0.001, paired t-test) in pre and post inhaler knowledge quiz. Their skill level of MDI with spacer were improved with mean score of 4.8 (p<0.001, paired t-test). For handihaler and SMI, there were improved with mean score of 5.35 (p<0.001, paired t-test) and 5.4 (p<0.001, paired t-test) respectively. From Aug 2019 to Oct 2019, there were total 141 eligible COPD in-patients having “teach-back’ education with significant improvement in the proportion of correct users.
Conclusion
The inhaler technique enhancement program was effective in increase the coverage of inhaler technique education to in-patient COPD cases and enhance all nurse’s inhaler technique and knowledge by ‘train the trainer’ method.