Medication Adherence in Children with Asthma.

Asthma is the most common chronic disease in childhood. If untreated, asthma can lead to debilitating daily symptoms which affect quality of life, but more importantly can lead to fatal asthma attacks which unfortunately still occur globally. The most effective treatment strategy for controlling asthma is for the patient to follow a personalised asthma action plan (PAAP) which will invariably include regular use of an inhaled corticosteroid.

How can quality be measured within a physician-led Community Emergency Medical service? A scoping review protocol.

Background: Quality measurement as part of quality improvement in healthcare is integral for service delivery and development. This is particularly pertinent for health services that deliver care in ways that differ from traditional practice. Community Emergency Medicine (CEM) is a novel and evolving concept of care delivered by services in parts of the UK and Ireland.

The use of remote video directly observed therapy to improve both inhaler technique and adherence to asthma medications.

Incorrect inhaler technique and non-adherence to inhaled preventer therapy often is the cause of poorly controlled asthma. Detecting and correcting non-adherence in asthma therapy has proven difficult. In addition, while patients may be able to demonstrate correct inhaler technique at the clinic recent evidence suggests that critical errors in inhaler technique occur in the home setting.

Minimum accepted competency examination: test item analysis.

Background: To ascertain if undergraduate medical students attain adequate knowledge to practice in paediatrics, we designed the minimum accepted competency (MAC) examination. This was a set of MCQ's designed to test the most basic, 'must know' knowledge as determined by non-faculty paediatric clinicians. Only two-thirds of undergraduate students passed this exam, despite 96% of the same cohort passing their official university paediatric examination.