TY - JOUR T1 - Harmonising spirometry education with HERMES: training a new generation of qualified spirometry practitioners across Europe JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 479 LP - 481 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00187810 VL - 37 IS - 3 AU - I. Steenbruggen AU - S. Mitchell AU - T. Severin AU - P. Palange AU - B.G. Cooper Y1 - 2011/03/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/37/3/479.abstract N2 - “Hundreds of millions of people of all ages suffer from preventable chronic respiratory diseases and respiratory allergies in all countries of the world… accounting for 4 million deaths annually” 1.The considerable toll of respiratory diseases in terms of quality of life, disability of patients and indeed premature death 2 underlines the importance of spirometry in the detection and monitoring during the management of respiratory disease. Yet, in the past two decades, there have been specific concerns of under-utilisation in screening 3, lack of training 4 and misdiagnosis based on inaccurate results 5, 6 which only serve to document the inadequacies in spirometry practice not only within Europe but on a world-wide scale.An abundance of reports 2–8 has propelled quality issues in the practice of spirometry to centre stage and consequently introduced a number of quality improvement strategies. High-quality spirometry relies on three key determinants: 1) documented guidelines in spirometry, 2) access to quality spirometers, and finally, 3) trained and qualified spirometry practitioners 9. To some degree, the ERS/ATS guidelines in standardisation of spirometry 10 and availability of affordable spirometers across medical settings have directly addressed these first two factors. Further efforts implemented in the US by NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health), in several European countries, as well as across New Zealand and Australia through ANZSRS (Australian and New Zealand Society of Respiratory Science) have produced comprehensive training structures with supporting documents and certification criteria to endorse health professionals with a qualification to practice high-quality spirometry. There is some evidence which consistently shows that competence in spirometry is the key to quality services 7, 11, 12, but access to such training and assessment is relatively limited. Adopting HERMES (Harmonising Education in Respiratory Medicine for European Specialists) as … ER -