Inhaled medications are critical in the pharmaceutical management of respiratory conditions,\nhowever, the majority of patients demonstrate at least one critical error when using an inhaler. Since\ncommunity pharmacists can be instrumental in addressing this care gap, weaimed to determine the rate\nand type of critical inhaler errors in community pharmacy settings, elucidate the factors contributing\nto inhaler technique errors, and identify instances when community pharmacists check proper inhaler\nuse. Fourth year pharmacy students on community practice placement (n = 53) identified 200 patients\nwhere at least one error was observed in 78% of participants when demonstrating inhaler technique.\nPrevalent errors of the users were associated with metered dose inhaler (MDI) (55.6%), Ellipta®\n(88.3%), and Discus® (86.7%) devices. Overall, the mean number of errors was 1.09. Possession of\nmore than one inhaler, use of rescue inhaler, and poor control of asthma were found to be significant\npredictors of having at least one critical error. In all participating pharmacies, inhaler technique is\nmainly checked on patient request (93.0%) and for all new inhalers (79.0%).
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