Is your practice ready for Pulmonary Rehabilitation Week - June 18-24?

Pulmonary Rehabilitation Week, a national campaign which raises awareness of the benefits of pulmonary rehabilitation for chronic lung illness?

Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is a highly cost effective intervention that is currently underused. Patients who suffer from breathlessness can find making that first step into a PR exercise class very daunting.  So it is really important that healthcare professionals can explain how attending and completing a PR programme will improve patients’ health.

What you can do:

• Update yourself on how patients benefit from PR by completing an online CPD module on the Primary Care Respiratory Academy website.
• If you are involved in service development or commissioning, you can learn about providing a sustainable pulmonary rehabilitation service across health economy in the service development stream of the PCRS-UK annual conference 28-29 September 2018, in Telford.   

Sally King, physiotherapist and member of the PCRS-UK Education Committee says: 

'Pulmonary Rehabilitation is amongst the most evidence based interventions for people with lung disease. It has significant impact on functional ability, disease knowledge and self-management which all lead to improved quality of life. Despite this, people are not always referred and for those who are, it is not always explained that PR is a fundamental part of their treatment. Pulmonary Rehabilitation Week is an opportunity for health care professionals to better understand the benefits of PR and recognise some of the barriers that patients face. This will lead to health care professionals being better equipped to have conversations with patients which increase the chances of those people engaging with PR and achieving the full benefit of it. '

Follow the PR Week campaign on social media - on Facebook, Twitter @prwukee and @PCRSUK