Teaching Use of Respiratory Inhalers (TURI)

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of enrolling and randomizing patients into one of two educational interventions to teach appropriate respiratory inhaler technique and to collect preliminary estimates of the comparative effectiveness of two types of education. Teach-to-Goal (TTG) education employs instruction followed by patient "teach-back," then repeated cycles of learning and assessment until a skill, i.e. respiratory inhaler technique, is mastered. By contrast, Brief Intervention (BI) education only consists of providing the patient with verbal and written instruction on the skill, i.e., respiratory inhaler technique. The investigators hypothesize that hospital-based TTG compared to BI increases a patient's ability to learn respiratory inhaler technique. The investigators will test this hypothesis separately for the MDI and Diskus® devices.