On this page
The benefits of this project
Benefits for Your Patients
- Improved safety through reduced use of empty inhalers.
- Enhanced patient education and self-management.
Benefits for Your Practice
- Decreased risk of undertreatment.
- Reduces preventable appointments and prescribing workload
Benefits for The Planet
- Supports environmentally responsible healthcare practices.
Opportunity for improvement
- Ensuring patients can tell when their inhaler is empty is essential for both clinical and environmental reasons. Many pMDIs do not have dose counters and therefore it is difficult for patients to know when the device is empty. This risks both waste of inhalers (throwing them away while they still contain usable medication doses) and undertreatment (continuing to use an inhaler which is not delivering any active medication).
- You might like to make a SMART goal for this project, e.g. Add patient information on dose counters to asthma review invites within 1 month and/or Educate practice team on importantce of dose counters and include Visual Aid on optimising asthma reviews on desktop within 3 months.
How to carry out this project
-
Send information to patients
Identify patients on repeat inhalers or patients with diagnosis of asthma or COPD.
Send information to these patients about how to tell if their inhaler is empty. This information could be incoprporated into their annual invite review.
Resource: Example text message
Do you know how to tell if your inhaler is empty? Ask your pharmacist or check here for more info: https://greeninhaler.org/telling-if-your-inhaler-is-empty/
-
Educate the team
Do the other clinicians in your team know how to tell if inhalers are empty? Do they know about the environmental and clinical risks associated with patients using inhalers without a dose counter? Could you arrange a brief update, perhaps at a clinical meeting or by sending an email.
Prescribing inhalers with dose counters reduces the risk of patients using empty inhalers or disposing of them early. You can check if an inhaler has a dose counter here https://www.rightbreathe.com/?s.
PrescQIPP have information leaflets and banners you can add to websites about this (section called patient information materials).
We have created videos and leaflets on types of inhaler devices which can be sent to patients that include information about dose counters. See project on optimising inhaler device choice in asthma for SMS/AccuRx messages with bit.ly links to these resources.
Resource: PrescQIPP
-
Study
Review the results, summarise learning, share with practice team and decide if any changes are needed to improve the process.
Decide when to re-audit again to ensure the change has lasted e.g. 2-3 months and use the Project Monitoring form to keep track.
=
Top tip
How to scale this project up or down
| Please note - Use of this project requires NetworkPLUS membership. If you would like to share this project with others, please invite them to purchase their own membership—access must not be shared with non-members. |
You could take this project to your PCN team. Ensure all practices have paid for membership.
Have you completed this QIP?
Tell us a little about your project and enter your data in order to generate a certificate showing the probable cost savings and other benefits. This project may help with CQC evidence submission (see disclaimers).
More project guides
-
Extreme Cold Weather Alert QIP
Carbon saving potential: Solid
<10 hours
-
Bath & Shower Emollient Deprescribing
Carbon saving potential: High
<10 hours
-
Reducing Emissions Associated with Banking
Carbon saving potential: Very high
20-40 hours
-
Switching Energy Provider
Carbon saving potential: Very high
<10 hours