Abstract
Introduction & aims: Asthma affects over 5 million people in the UK and accounts for one hospital admission every 7.5 minutes. The British Thoracic Society (BTS) has evidence-based guidelines on the management of acute asthmatics which have been shown to reduce readmission rates. This study aims to audit the management of acute asthmatic admissions against BTS guidelines and establish whether or not intervention by an asthma nurse specialist (ANS) improves the audit criteria outcomes.
Methods: In a busy Outer London district general hospital, retrospective case note audit was carried out on all patients admitted with acute asthma in September and October 2011. The patients were then divided into those who were jointly managed by the medical team and ANS with those who were managed by the medical team alone.
Results: 50 patients were admitted over the 2 month period, of which 50% had been reviewed by the ANS. Across all 16 BTS audit criteria, the achieval rates in the group of patients who received the intervention of ANS was either equal to or higher than those who were managed by physicians alone. The average achieval rate of all audit criteria in patients who did not see the ANS was 29.3% compared to 60.1% for those who were seen by the ANS.
Conclusions: The intervention of the ANS in the inpatient management of acute asthmatics increases the adherence to national guidelines, thus improving standards in overall management. This audit also demonstrates the importance of the continuing education of junior doctors in the guidelines in the management of acute asthmatics to improve overall adherence.
- © 2012 ERS
