1st Spanish Asthma Right Care Conference recap: "Asthma, a challenge for everybody"

In early November, the Spanish Asthma Right Care team held the first national Asthma Right Care Spain conference in Seville.

The main objective of this conference was raising awareness of Asthma Right Care, the social movement for health led in Spain by GRAP and internationally by IPCRG, and also training participants to enable them to deliver valuable asthma interventions in primary care.

Based on the evidence that a comprehensive and multidisciplinary healthcare model for the management of patients with asthma in primary care can help to eliminate inefficiencies, reduce the variability in clinical practice not justified by the variability in the severity of asthma and improve the patient experience, the conference gathered participants from different professional roles involved in providing healthcare for people with asthma: family doctors, nurses and community pharmacists.

Plenary sessions and interactive workshops were developed with the aim of delivering a dynamic and interactive meeting that encouraged the active participation of attendees as a multidisciplinary team.

The plenaries addressed a variety of topics such as the current state of asthma in Spain and how to achieve a correct diagnosis of asthma in primary care, which included the release of a new GRAP tool for the peak expiratory flow calculation (Calculadora Peak Flow) and a plenary for attendees to identify the opportunities for the right management of asthma offered in the workplaces of family doctors, nurses and community pharmacists.

One workshop focused on showing the different types of inhalers and teaching inhalation technique, using a gamified model based on the Spanish quiz show ‘Pasapalabra'. A second workshop addressed the most common mistakes in asthma for three clinical scenarios, using role-play methodology with participants working in multidisciplinary groups on how to correct them using Asthma Right Care resources and the IPCRG Desktop Helpers 2 and 9.

The initiative fostered synergies to lead multidisciplinary interventions for the management of asthma in primary care and brought great satisfaction to both the attendees and organisers. Here is some feedback from those who attended:

• "This asthma conference has been absolutely different from anything I have known so far and it has given me a very meaningful insight into my professional role and that of others in asthma management” - Family doctor
• "How can it be that I had not heard of the Asthma Right Care project until now? I’ve found it very interesting” - Nurse
• "The idea of the asthma ruler is great, where can I get them?” - Pharmacist
• "I learnt a lot and had a lot of fun” - Family doctor