Spirometry and Audiometry Refresher Training Mondi, Hilton – January 2019

Our participants are all highly qualified and experienced Occupational Health Care practitioners.

My journey started off prior to meeting this amazing group of ladies and gentlemen, as one of sheer anxiety and trepidation, knowing that these ladies are so experienced in the field of Occupational Health.

Within the first hour or so I felt completely relaxed and confident with imparting knowledge onto them. We had many round table discussions regarding the legalities of correct interpretation, record keeping and auditing of all the three components being Audio, Spiro and Vision.

The audiometry training went very well and the vision was held as an open forum discussion. All legislation pertaining to these subjects was discussed at great length.

The spirometry refresher for me personally was very exciting. I was able to impart my knowledge on how to calculate FEV1, FVC and best test. Most of the ladies and gents had forgotten how to do these calculations. Examples of spirograms where given to each learner for interpretation. There was a big debate as to how a mild restrictive pattern looks and the interpretation of the values.

The challenge was with moving interpretation methods from the use of the familiar percentage of predicted methods to the use of lower levels of normal and z-scores. I think all in Occupational Health will benefit with the knowledge as to how the LLN came about and how we should use this for interpretation going forward.

Unfortunately, no photographs of the lovely students were taken. Each student did comment that they had learnt something from the knowledge that I had imparted with them.