CHEST - Bridging Specialties Tool

Three Lakes Foundation provided the initial funding for CHEST to design a multiphase educational tool to reduce diagnostic delays for patients with Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILDs), including pulmonary fibrosis.  ILD is often overlooked as a potential diagnosis and can be difficult to diagnose.

A steering committee of primary care physicians and ILD experts was created to:

•  Identify the gaps in making timely diagnoses of interstitial lung diseases such as PF

•  Create a tool to improve diagnosis of ILD and PF

•  Educate clinicians on how to use the tool

  
  

As a result of this collaboration, the Bridging Specialties series was born. The first toolkit of the series, the ILD Clinician Toolkit, contains resources designed to help shorten the time to diagnosis and outlines the steps to take when a patient displays signs of ILD.

The toolkit includes an ILD-specific patient questionnaire, an e-learning module, a

decision-making tool, and an interactive story with action choices and resultant impacts.

www.chestnet.org

Bridging Specialties | Learning & Events - American College of Chest Physicians

The 2022 Bridging Specialties steering committee was comprised of pulmonologists including Daniel F. Dilling, Andrew H. Limper, Corey D. Kershaw, and Tejaswini Kulkarni, family medicine physicians including Timothy Hernandez and William Lago and a nurse practitioner, Jessica Glennie.

Based on the success of the ILD Bridging Specialties Toolkit, the program was

expanded to include toolkits for both COPD and PH-ILD. CHEST is further expanding the program to include nontuberculous mycobacteria disease and bronchiectasis.