Are peak flow meters readily available in community pharmacies?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A written asthma action plan is a set of instructions for patients to treat their asthma symptoms during exacerbations to reduce the need for physician consultation and to expedite upgrading of therapy. Use of a symptom-based written asthma action plan has been proven to reduce hospitalization.1,2 A peak flow meter is a portable, user-friendly, handheld device that measures the air flow in the bronchi. Currently, written asthma action plans from most national bodies such as the Canadian Lung Association, the National Institute of Health, and the Family Physician Airway Group of Canada include symptoms and peak flow meter reading as measures of asthma control. Inconsistencies are found in written asthma plans, which usually include symptoms and may or may not include peak flow meter readings. A recent study identified 69 unique English-language or French-language asthma plans for adults in Canada.3 Despite this variation, many written action plans use symptom tracking and peak flow readings.3,4 Evidence has shown that asthma action plans that include peak flow meter assessment based on previous personal best readings consistently improved asthma outcome.5 Recently, we have noted that patients are having difficulties filling prescriptions for peak flow meters in Alberta. We contacted 9 local community pharmacies, and only 1 had a peak flow meter on hand. If obtaining a peak flow meter for patients poses difficulties, it is unlikely to encourage adherence to any action plan that includes peak flow meter readings. The primary goal of the study was to determine the proportion of community pharmacies in Alberta that stock peak flow meters. The secondary objectives were (1) to determine how many pharmacies would order a peak flow meter for a patient if they did not have one in the pharmacy and (2) to determine whether pharmacists are able to provide instructions to patients on how to use a peak flow meter.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".