Abstract
Introduction: The Global Strategy for Asthma Management and Prevention (GINA) is useful in the management of asthma patients.
Aims and objectives: We hypothesized that many physicians who attend to asthma patients are not familiar with the components of the GINA guidelines.
Methods: Based on the GINA guidelines, a multiple choice questionnaire which addressed various components of the guidelines was distributed to physicians who attend to asthma patients.
Results: 54 Physicians were randomly selected from among 118 physicians from 2 Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria: 31 from Internal medicine, 20 from Family Medicine and 3 from Respiratory unit. There were 10 general internists, 2 medical officers, 28 junior residents, 11 senior residents and 3 consultants. 72.2% of the respondents did not attend any Continued Medical Education (CME) in asthma after graduation. Those of them who attended a CME post graduation scored higher than those who had not attended but this was not significant (39.78% Vs 31.2%) There was also an improvement in total performance with hierarchy but this was not statistically significant. Respiratory physicians scored significantly higher than the Internal medicine and the Family physicians (70.96% Vs 34.13% Vs 37.09%). The knowledge of pathological basis of asthma had the highest sub-score (50%) followed by diagnosis (48.7%) with asthma education having the least score (16.6%). Overall the average total score was poor (37.2%).
Conclusion: By identifying the areas of deficiency in each group of Doctors we can design education intervention programmes to improve the understanding of the GINA guidelines among physicians and ultimately the quality of care.
- © 2011 ERS
