Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Education on correct inhaler technique in pharmacy schools: Barriers and needs

Iman A Basheti¹ , Anas I Natsheh¹, Wesam G Ammari², Samar Khater¹, Eyad A Qunaibi¹, Sinthia Z Bosnic-Anticevich³

¹Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Applied Sciences; ²Faculty of Pharmacy, Al-Ahliyya Amman University, Amman, Jordan; ³Sydney Medical School and Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia.

For correspondence:- Iman A Basheti Email: dr_iman@asu.edu.jo Tel:+96265609999

Received: 29 October 2014 Accepted: 17 March 2015 Published: 26 April 2015

Citation: Basheti I, Natsheh AI, Ammari WG, Khater S, Qunaibi EA, Bosnic-Anticevich SZ. Education on correct inhaler technique in pharmacy schools: Barriers and needs. Trop J Pharm Res 2015; 14(4):715-722 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v14i4.22

© 2015 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the effectiveness of a standard educational module on pharmacy students’ inhaler technique demonstration skills.

Methods: This investigational study was conducted during the Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics tutorial classes in 2011. All fifth-year students were given placebo inhaler devices and information leaflets explaining the use of these devices. Students were then shown, by demonstration, the correct technique for each of the inhalers. All the students were assessed on the use of each of the inhalers two weeks following the tutorial. A validated questionnaire regarding the students’ barriers to demonstrate the correct inhaler technique was completed by all the students. The inhaler techniques demonstrated were Accuhaler (ACC), Turbuhaler (TH) and metered-dose inhaler (MDI).

Results: Students scored significantly better with ACC with a score of 4.38 ± 1.81 (out of 9.00) than with TH (3.96 ± 1.75 out of 9.00); p = 0.004, and MDI (2.69 ± 1.76 out of 8.00); p < 0.001, based on Friedman test 2 weeks following training. The majority of students (78 %) believed that lack of practice with the devices was the primary barrier to correct inhaler use.

Conclusion: Standard educational training may not be the most appropriate method of teaching students the correct use of inhalers. Clearly, there is a practice element missing which needs to be addressed in a feasible way.

Keywords: Inhaler technique, Pharmacy education, Hands-on training, Training barrier