News
Latest news from ARNS
Pulmonary Rehabilitation Podcast
The week of 18th and 24th June 2018 was Pulmonary Week in the UK. Pulmonary Rehab (PR) is an exercise and education programme for people with long-term lung conditions. PR has multiple benefits to patients from reducing sensation of breathlessness, improving quality of life and confidence in self-management. PR has also shown to reduce risk of exacerbation, reduce A&E attendance/hospital admission and length of stay. Claire Norfolk and Alex Christie, Respiratory Physiotherapists in Berkshire West discuss what PR is and the benefits in attending and what is on offer in Berkshire West with Russell Winwood, the COPD Athlete in Australia who came and spoke at their Pulmonary Rehab service 2017 prior to taking part in the London Marathon raising money for lung disease research.
To listen to the podcast go to https://soundcloud.com/user-184199032/breathe-easy-week-2018
Manchester ILD Nurses win Nursing Times Respiratory Award 2018
The ILD Nurse Team from Manchester University Hospital Foundation Trust were awarded the Nursing Times Respiratory Award 2018 for their project “ILD Service – Improving patient access to a specialist tertiary service”
The awards ceremony was held at Grosvenor House, London, where Wendy Preston, Chair of ARNS, presented the award and was delighted to offer her congratulations to the worthy winners.
Get your inhaler technique right in three minutes
A series of new videos has been created by Asthma UK and endorsed by the UK Inhaler Group.
Good inhaler technique is key for people with respiratory conditions, but there are quite a few variations in how it’s taught. That’s why Asthma UK has created a range of easy-to-follow instructional videos for the most widely prescribed inhalers in the UK.
“We know that if people with respiratory conditions don’t use their inhaler correctly, or regularly enough, their symptoms may increase – and they are at greater risk of being admitted to hospital” – Dr Omar Usmani, Chair of the UK Inhaler Group & Consultant Respiratory Physician
Clinically accurate and developed with input from people with respiratory conditions, these are short, easy-to-watch tutorials showing how to best use the most commonly prescribed inhalers. The videos are endorsed by the UK Inhaler Group, a not-for-profit coalition whose members include professional societies and charities like the British Lung Foundation, as well as GPs, hospital specialists, pharmacists, physiotherapists and nurses from highly respected national bodies.
Dr Andy Whittamore, Asthma UK’s in-house GP, says: “As healthcare professionals, we can’t be with our patients all the time, but we now all have a reliable and up-to-date library of inhaler videos. This will give both me and my patients the confidence that they are taking their inhaled medicines correctly every time. We can go through the videos in clinic and my patients can view them again in their own time whenever they need to.”
Access the videos here
NICE Asthma quality standard update (QS25)
We are pleased to announce that the NICE Asthma update has been published on the NICE website today.
Also available on the website is a summary of the consultation comments prepared by the NICE quality standards team and the full set of consultation comments.
Dyspnooea (breathlessness): Still an ongoing battle
Dyspnoea or more commonly called breathlessness or breathing discomfort continues to be a common, debilitating symptom. There is still an ongoing issue with patients’ reporting chronic breathlessness often attributing it to age or self-infliction such as smoking. There also continues to be lack of understanding from non-specialist health care professionals about the extent dyspnoea can be debilitating, with delays in accessing treatments, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological.
Download the full article written by our Vice Chair, Katy Beckford and Alex Christie, Pulmonary Rehabilitation Lead here
Publication of the Asthma Audit Development Project (AADP) phase 2 final report
The Asthma Audit Development Project (AADP) has recently published its phase 2 final report, which presents conclusions and recommendations on how a National Asthma Audit should be conducted. It is the second of the AADP reports produced since the start of the project in November 2016. This is part of the National Asthma and COPD Audit Programme (NACAP).
The report is available as:
- A project report which presents full project methodology, key findings, patient quotes, conclusions and recommendations for next steps
- A patient summary report which provides a more concise, lay friendly, summary of the report. It contains visualisations of the project methodology and findings, along with head line conclusions and recommendations.
Both of these are available to download at: https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/asthma-audit-development-project-aadp-phase-2-final-report. The full AADP pilot storyboard and the report appendices are also available to download via this link.
ARNS is very excited to be part of this project and is looking forward to seeing the implementation of a long overdue National Asthma Audit that will start to be rolled out from November 2018, with a view of providing long term Quality Improvement across the NHS.
