Does the educational component of a pulmonary rehabilitation programme meet patients’ needs?

Abstract

Aims

This study aimed to understand patient information needs and how best to meet them in order to improve rehabilitation provision and aid disease self-management by exploring experiences of people who had recently completed a pulmonary rehabilitation programme in a community hospital setting.

Methods

Qualitative research using focus groups was undertaken with 23 patients who had completed pulmonary rehabilitation within the previous four months. The focus groups were tape-recorded and contemporaneous notes made. The tapes were transcribed verbatim and template analysis was used to develop themes.

Findings

The key information needs were for a full understanding of the disease to be generated for patients, their families and the wider public much earlier in the disease process and preferably at the point of diagnosis. Patients perceived that they needed to come to terms with the condition. In order to improve disease self-management feelings of anxiety and frustration should be addressed with the suggestion that individual counseling might be made available through the rehabilitation programme. The need for continued support was highlighted with an emphasis on peer group support activities.

Conclusions

The findings have implications for primary care in terms of unmet needs in the early stages of the condition and pulmonary rehabilitation programmes in terms of providing individual counseling and ongoing peer group support to aid disease self-management.

Reproduced with permission from Sage Publications Ltd.