Abstract
Background: Early and accurate diagnosis is key in attaining the best outcomes for patients with occupational asthma (OA).
Aims: To record whether UK tertiary occupational asthma centres are regularly auditing the quality of their documentation in OA services, and determine whether existing national Standard of Care audit criteria published in 2012 remain fit for purpose.
Methods: Consultants and Specialist Nurses working in UK specialist OA centres were invited by email to take part in a short electronic questionnaire survey. Participants were asked about their previous involvement with audit, and rate whether each of the criteria remained useful for clinical practice on a five-point scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree). An 80% level was pre-selected as supporting consensus agreement. Free text was also collected for suggested improvements and potential new audit criteria.
Results: Fifteen consultants and one Specialist Nurse participated in the survey. All participants agreed that it was important to take part in regular audit of their service, and to have agreed national audit criteria. 13/16 participants reported previously utilising the existing criteria. Consensus agreement was demonstrated for all of the existing 13 audit criteria, covering documentation of initial outpatient assessment, investigations and post-diagnosis management. Over 50 individual qualitative comments were collected about the criteria.
Discussion: Current published UK audit criteria for OA outpatient services remain fit for purpose, meeting the needs of specialist clinicians. Recommendations for improvements and potential new criteria will be considered for the updated Standard of Care.
Footnotes
Cite this article as: European Respiratory Journal 2019; 54: Suppl. 63, PA2809.
This is an ERS International Congress abstract. No full-text version is available. Further material to accompany this abstract may be available at www.ers-education.org (ERS member access only).
- Copyright ©the authors 2019