Improving Childhood Asthma Management Community of Practice - Session 6: Difficult to control asthma - the role of rarely used puffers, biologics, and referral pathways

This community of practice aims to improve clinician confidence in managing childhood asthma, and foster collaboration between asthma care services in the inner west of Melbourne and the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH). This session will focus on difficult to control asthma and the role of rarely used puffers, biologics, and referral pathways.

The community of practice will provide an opportunity for all asthma care providers managing children living in the inner west of Melbourne to come together to improve their clinical knowledge and confidence in the management of asthma in children. The sessions will also focus on building the confidence of clinicians to access resources and services to better link patients into the system.

The community of practice will consist of multidisciplinary clinicians from community, primary and tertiary care services with a shared purpose to improve the outcomes for children living with asthma in Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong, and Wyndham. Members will play a key role in identifying current barriers and working together to develop local solutions to improve the care and delivery of service to children living with asthma in the inner west of Melbourne.

Opportunity will be provided for members to bring forth complex, de-identified case studies to be discussed within the group. This will also provide an opportunity for members to learn from a multidisciplinary team and better understand the role different care providers have as part of the asthma care team. Local data will also be shared to better understand how the system is performing, including sharing of hospital emergency admission rates of children with asthma from the local area. 

Improving Childhood Asthma Management Community of Practice sessions will be held on the second Wednesday of each month until June 2023. Topics to be covered in upcoming sessions include asthma in 5–12-year-olds, severe asthma, and asthma medications. Clinical content will be covered by subject matter experts, including specialists from RCH.

Facilitators

Dr Kirsty Tamis is originally from Scotland. She studied in Edinburgh and graduated in 2007. She was trained in hospital medicine with a focus on elderly care and then retrained in general practice. She is a member of the Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of General Practitioners in UK and Australia and has a diploma in child health. She has an interest in all aspects of general practice but especially chronic disease prevention and management, child health and elderly care.

Learning outcomes:

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

• implement best practice management for asthma in children
• describe resources and local services available for children living with asthma
• identify collaborative, multidisciplinary opportunities to improve care for children living with asthma
• interpret local data and identify potential solutions to improve asthma care locally.