Christine Jenkins

We actually did patient consultations for this blueprint and we wanted to go out to the patients in the community who didn't necessarily know all that was needed to know about us.

We needed to understand from them what they thought the problems were.

And one of the things they suggested in particular was that practice nurses and asthma educators had helped them a lot, often that pharmacists had helped them a lot.

So team-based care, not just the GP.

The GP is core to this, but nevertheless, it's something that is a partnership, helping patients in different settings to understand their asthma.

Many patients said their GP just writes in a script and doesn't assess their asthma.

So, again, one of the things in the blueprint is defining the optimal consultation for people with asthma and we've done that in short form such as an urgent care visit or an opportunistic possibility where patients come for another reason but actually their asthma needs review, a full review or a first consultation and fitting that into MBS items that are currently available.

You know, we do think the GP is hugely important, the patient's important too, and helping patients to understand they can do better with their asthma is crucial.

A lot of patients think that having symptoms every day, that's asthma, isn't it?

Well, actually, no.

We're in the blueprint suggesting that asthma can be controlled such that people don't need any reliever medication.

It can even go into remission if it's well managed.

And starting with anti-inflammatory reliever rather than the blue puffer is one of the keys to that.

We do have a complex system and there are many moving parts and there's not one solution to this.

We would absolutely acknowledge that.

We do think that helping patients to understand more about their asthma and community awareness and raising community awareness is important.

We've also advocated for better funding for GPs to undertake good asthma care, particularly to test patients objectively, is really important.

We've also suggested that training pharmacists is crucial.

So yes, pharmacists are going to have increased prescribing rights.

What we want is that they understand that the Ventolin over-the-counter is not the solution.