Long-lasting lung diseases like asthma and chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) - collectively called chronic respiratory disease (CRD) - place a heavy and growing burden on people living in low and middle income countries. Many of them could be healthier if their disease was accurately diagnosed and correctly treated, but many are not. Doctors and nurses working in primary health care clinic are best placed people to diagnose and treat CRD, especially where local clinics are near and free. But this raises three questions: 1. How to ensure that CRDs get the priority they need in overloaded clinics? 2. How to train clinicians to diagnose and manage CRDs without special test equipment? 3. How to ensure rational evidence-based diagnosis and prescribing for CRD?
The investigators have developed a way of improving primary health care for people who have CRD, who often also have other long term health conditions. It is a patient management tool (PMT), that is, a printed manual of flowcharts taking doctors and nurses from symptoms to diagnoses to treatments, tests or referrals, with advice on how to make decisions along the way about diagnoses, tests, treatments and referrals. They are prompted to think of other diseases and health problems that might be undetected or neglected. The package also includes a method of training known as outreach education. First trainers are trained, then trainers train groups of doctors and nurses at their workplaces, showing them how to use the guidelines, and using their own patients and clinical problems as examples. This outreach training is repeated several times in short sessions. The investigators' research in Africa has shown that this approach can be effective, cost effective, feasible and sustainable. It has been rolled out throughout South Africa and other African countries. But it has have not yet been shown to be effective for this combination of diseases (CRDs together with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, tuberculosis and back pain). The investigators have also not tried or evaluate it in Latin American countries, which have different health systems, and have many more doctors providing primary health care. Now co-investigators in the Brazilian city of Florianopolis have decided to put this educational package in place throughout the city, and have agreed to do so as a randomised controlled trial. This will clearly show whether PACK Brazil is effective, cost effective and feasible under Brazilian conditions.
The core of the research will be the randomised controlled trial. 48 primary care clinics in the city will be randomly chosen either 1) to get the whole package of patient management tool plus training, or 2) only to get the patient management tool (which we expect will make little difference without training). The investigators will compare patients in these two groups of clinics to see the effects of the training. They will use the clinics' electronic medical records to identify about 2000 adults diagnosed with asthma or COPD. After the training starts they will follow these patients up for a year, and assess whether they are being appropriately treated and tested. They will also compare the rates of new diagnoses of asthma and COPD in each clinic, and various health indicators.
