Asthma Clinic

The Ambulatory Severe Asthma Program within the Division of Respiratory Medicine provides comprehensive asthma care to children with moderate to severe asthma. Our interprofessional team consists of paediatric pulmonologists, nurse practitioners, nurses, respiratory therapists/certified asthma educators and a social worker to offer a team approach to treating and managing children and adolescents with severe asthma.

Referrals

As asthma is a common childhood illness, we only provide ongoing follow up for children with severe asthma (those requiring at least high dose inhaled steroids and a second asthma medication to maintain control of their asthma). Please see our referral page to review our referral criteria.

For further information on managing asthma, please refer to the Canadian Thoracic Society Asthma Guidelines. 

Please bring the following to your visit so we can provide the best recommendations for you/your child's asthma:

• All medications and delivery devices (ie. inhalers and spacer devices/Aerochamber)
• Your asthma action plan or symptom diary (if you have these)
• Any videos of your child having breathing symptoms that are typical of their asthma

To ensure that your care team is aware of our recommendations and that we can send prescriptions to your pharmacy, please have the following information available:

• The name of your primary care provider, paediatrician and any other provider that you'd like us to send a clinic letter to
• Your pharmacy name, phone number, and fax number

The Ambulatory Severe Asthma Program is a multi-disciplinary team so you may be seen by an asthma educator, respiratory therapist, nurse, social worker, nurse practitioner, as well as a physician.

You will be notified of any testing that will be done as part of your visit but this will typically include lung function testing and if indicated skin testing for environmental aeroallergens. Testing is usually done before your clinic visit so that the results can be reviewed with you in clinic.

You will be sent questionnaires about your asthma via MyChart prior to your clinic visit and if those haven’t been completed when you check in, you will be asked to complete them at that time.

Our team may gather information from your care team to help us better understand your asthma. This may include your primary care physician, pediatrician, specialists that you have seen for your asthma or allergies, facilities where you have received testing related to your lungs, hospitals where you have been seen for asthma, and your pharmacy.

The Asthma Clinic at SickKids is dedicated to research that will help to improve the lives of children with asthma and we are always interested to hear what you think we should be researching. While you are here, you might have the chance to participate in one of our research studies. A member of our team may ask if you or your child would be interested in joining a study. We will explain why we are doing the study and how it will work. Participation in research is always voluntary. No matter what your choice, your child will get the same quality of care.

Useful websites for information on Asthma

• AboutKidsHealth - Asthma 
• The Lung Association (includes asthma action plans)
• Asthma Society of Canada 
• BC Children's - Asthma Patient and Family Resources
  • Includes multi-lingual asthma action plans (English, Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Korean, Punjabi, Spanish, Vietnamese) and asthma education video (English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi, Spanish)
• University of Calgary - Asthma Resources
  • Includes multi-liingual asthma information (English, Arabic, Farsi, French, Korean, Mandarin, Punjabi, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tigrinya, Urdu, Vietnamese)