Paramedic Awareness of Inhaler Devices – PAID survey

<bold>Background</bold> – Studies or surveys assessing knowledge of paramedics about inhaler devices are very few. <bold>Objectives</bold> – To assess the knowledge of paramedics about inhalers and competence in demonstrating usage. <bold>Method</bold> – This is a non-randomized, multicentric questionnaire-based survey of paramedics associated with respiratory care conducted in two tertiary care hospitals in West Bengal, India. <bold>Results</bold> – Total 103 paramedics were interviewed. 4.85%, 69.9% & 25.24% paramedics had <1year, 1-5 year & >5 years of experience in respiratory care. 56.31% received proper training on inhaler devices. Only 5.8% received refresher training within 3 months of the survey. Removing the cap which is the first step of using MDI+Spacer was done correctly by 77% whereas 46.6% paramedics failed to ask the patient to tilt the head. 67.96% paramedics properly demonstrated breathing technique in DPIs whereas 39.8% made mistakes in inhaler & head position and exhaling into the DPI. In case of BAI, 72.82% correctly lowered the cap before use but 44.66% failed to ask the patient to exhale completely before inhaling the drug. Over 70% paramedics were aware of maintenance of inhaler devices. 65% paramedics passed the overall inhaler demonstration. Our survey showed that >5 years of experience has a positive effect on inhaler demonstration competency (p= 0.0033). Proper training also had similar effect on efficiency (p<0.00001). <bold>Conclusion</bold> – Paramedic awareness and competence about inhalers is inadequate. Experience in respiratory care and proper training on inhaler devices empowers paramedics in skillful demonstration which is believed to improve outcome.