A GP's perspective: What I learned at the recent free Hot Topics webinar - Asthma

My name is Dr Liza Lack, I'm a GP who works for Raukura Hauora o Tainui in the Waikato.  I'm also involved in Hot Topics New Zealand Webinar Series, delivering and ‘New Zealandising’ the content.  

One of the Free Webinars that we did this year was about Asthma.  I learned quite a lot about this whilst doing the webinar.  I think the key learnings for me were that in our Māori and Pacific population there are more hospitalisations.  

Going alongside that, hospitalisations are a red flag for asthma deaths.  It's come to my attention that many of the children who have asthma in our practice will see different people, and the asthma admission is not necessarily recorded.  

So I'm currently in the process of trying to work out how we can record those asthma admissions, and also how we can then provide follow-up for those children and their whanau to ensure that we are providing them with the best asthma care.  

Another learning is that the ACT questionnaire is a great enabler for making the diagnosis of asthma, along with using peak flow.  It's also come to my attention that we should be checking inhaler technique at almost every consultation.  Having followed up that advice with talking to my Practice Nurses and Pharmacists, it's very interesting to find the number of stories of people whose asthma was poor, and when their technique was checked, how bad it was (their technique), and it was a very simple fix.

I hope that you will enjoy the Hot Topics for New Zealand course.  I think it's a very good form of education, and certainly for me as a working GP, I find that the learnings, because they're attached to cases, enable me to recall it when I'm actually sitting in the chair.

You can listen to Dr Liza Lack's experience here:

Hot Topics GP Update New Zealand 2021 - starts 06/10/2021 8:00 PM (Pacific/Auckland)

Tailored specifically to NZ GPs, a year's worth of medical updates in one course for GPs, Registrars & Nurse Practitioners.