FREE Course Helps You Expand Your Role in Asthma Management

January 13, 2009

Several years ago the Environmental Protection Agency issued an unrestricted educational grant to the American Respiratory Care Foundation for the development of an online educational course aimed at helping RTs learn more about indoor asthma triggers.

Now a second course has been added to the mix. “Allergy Skin Testing and Smoking Cessation—the Expanded Role of the Respiratory Therapist” builds on the information presented in “Indoor Asthma Triggers and the Respiratory Therapist” by exploring the role RTs can play in determining the allergens that may contribute to an asthmatic condition and how smoking cessation benefits the asthmatic smoker or the asthmatic family members of a smoker.

Therapists who take the three hour course will come away with the ability to:

• Describe the components of asthma according to the EPR3.
• Identify what the role of the respiratory therapist can be in skin testing.
• Describe why skin testing plays an essential role in the diagnosis of allergic asthma.
• Identify the harmful effects of secondhand smoke/environmental tobacco smoke (ETS).
• Explain the interaction of ETS with allergy/asthma.
• Summarize what to teach patients about protecting themselves from ETS.

The course has been approved for three hours of non-traditional Continuing Respiratory Care Education (CRCE) credit for those who successfully pass a post test.

Both of these courses are available free of charge to respiratory therapists, which means you can earn six hours of FREE CRCE credit while enhancing your asthma management skills.