Data collection
asthmatic, asthma, ’ disease, COPD
ASTHMATIC, COPD, ASTHMA, ASTHMA
A data collection form was used to collect information from the participants. A clinical pharmacist (research assistant) performed all the data collection. The data collection form comprised five parts; the first included patient demographics and clinical characteristics (e.g., age, gender, prescribed inhaled medications and comorbidities). The second part included checklists for the assessment of the inhaler technique. The inhaler checklists were obtained from the official websites of the inhaler-producing companies and were standardized to include 9 main steps for pMDI, Accuhaler, Turbohaler devices and 10 steps for Respimat, Breezhaler devices. All checklists are available in the (The third part of the data collection form assessed the patients’ disease control using the validated Arabic versions of the Asthma control test (ACT) and the COPD assessment test (CAT) for asthma and COPD patients respectively [The fourth part included the Arabic version of the 4-item Morisky Green Levine scale (MGLS) to assess medication adherence among the study participants [Patients were considered to adherent to their medication if they were taking correctly all the prescribed controller inhalers. The fifth part assessed the disease-related QoL using the validated Arabic version of the mini asthma quality of life questionnaire (mini AQLQ) for asthmatic patients and the validated Arabic version of the St. George respiratory questionnaire (SGRQ) for COPD patients. Both tools, their domains and scoring systems were provided by email upon request by the developers [The mini AQLQ is a 15-item questionnaire developed and validated by Juniper et al. (1999). It covers 4 domains (‘symptoms’, ‘activity limitations’, ‘emotional functions’, and ‘environmental stimuli’) with a score that ranges between 1 and 7 for each item. The 7-point scale is calculated by diving the total score (15 questions) by 7 to get a score that ranges from 1 to 7. Increase in the 7-point scale score indicates less impairment in the patient’s quality of life as described by [The St George respiratory questionnaire (SGRQ) is a 50-item validated tool that covers three major domains: ‘symptom’, ‘activity’, and ‘impact’ [The automated application can produce four scores; a total score, a ‘symptom’ score, an ‘activity limitation’ score and an ‘impact’ score. Each of these scores can range from 0 to 100, where a higher number indicates more impairment in the patient’s QoL [