The goals of this EQIPP: Asthma - Diagnosing and Managing in Pediatrics course are to:

• Provide you guidance on asthma diagnosis, its control and follow-up, spirometry testing and measurement, medications administration, flu vaccination, asthma action plan development and active partnership between providers and patients in patient education and self-management.
• Help you create plans for improvement to address gaps identified in key clinical activities of Diagnosing and Managing Asthma. You will collect baseline and follow-up data as you work to improve care and processes through Plan, Do, Study, and Act (PDSA) cycles.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

Recognize critical responsibilities which include the following:

Generalist Track

• Diagnose asthma: Characterize asthma in the initial assessment.
• Asthma control and follow up: Achieve and maintain control of the clinical manifestations of the disease for prolonged periods.
• Spirometry: Understand the role of spirometry in the diagnosis of asthma and the ongoing role of spirometry in asthma management.
  • Medications: Use guidelines for prescribing, adjusting, or maintaining a medication regimen to gain and maintain control of asthma.
  • Vaccinate: Learn of evidence-based recommendations regarding flu shots.
  • Asthma action plan: Involve patients directly in self-management by providing clear, written instructions of the agreed-upon treatment plan for at-home use.
  • Education: Develop active partnerships in asthma education and the essential educational messages to provide to patients.
  • Schooled in asthma: Learn techniques practitioners can use to develop a school-relevant asthma history intake, open the lines of communication between practice and school personnel, learn about prescribing practices for school-age patients, get ready to work with schools and your community to help them manage asthma correctly.

Hospitalist Track

• Initial assessment and management: Learn about initial assessment and management.
• Hospital course: Provide frequent assessment, including clinical assessment of respiratory distress and fatigue, and objective measurement of airflow (peak expiratory flow [PEF] or forced expiratory volume in the first second of expiration [FEV1]) and oxygen saturations.
• Discharge planning: Learn of information that should be included in the written plans (Asthma Discharge Plan and Action Plan), the principles of the stepwise approach for managing the asthma long-term, and procedures for organizing patient follow-up in a hospital setting.

Measuring Performance

• Measure and improve care delivery and processes concerning Diagnosing and managing asthma by doing the following:
  • Collect and analyze baseline data to establish a starting point for improvement.
    • Identify one or more performance gaps in one or more key activities of diagnosing and managing asthma.
    • Create an improvement plan for closing identified performance gap(s) by clarifying the improvement idea to be tested:
      • AIM: What are we trying to improve or accomplish?
      • MEASURES: How will we know that a change made is an improvement?
      • CHANGES: What changes can we make that will result in improvement?
      • Test your ideas quickly, on a small scale, so you can determine if the changes lead to improvement.
      • Collect and analyze follow-up data to measure the results of your test.
      • Determine how to sustain successful changes and how to systematically integrate them into the culture, processes, and workflow of your practice.
      • Create additional improvement plans and repeat PDSA cycles until you reach the maximum potential of providing optimal diagnosis and management of children in your practice.