In the nearly 9 years (!) that I've been at the British Lung Foundation, the vast majority of people who have been to pulmonary rehabilitation have raved about it.
But... not everyone gets to go. Not everyone feels as though their condition is properly understood. And there are other issues that can crop up too.
So while most services seem to be doing a great job, there's still work to be done.
The Royal College of Physicians is creating a Pulmonary Rehabilitation Services Accreditation Scheme (PRSAS). The idea is that it will encourage the people who provide pulmonary rehab in your area to improve and develop their services. It should also give you more confidence that you're getting the service you need.
To make the scheme work, we need to hear from people who have been to pulmonary rehab. Can you help?
The Royal College of Physicians would love it if you could complete their survey - surveymonkey.co.uk/r/TCW2Z8S.
They're also holding an online focus group on the 27th of October, and need people to join in.
I've completed the survey Bethany. I would recommend attending a programme to anyone with a lung condition. Unfortunately they are not always accessible due to lack of transport etc.. I had to travel 45 minutes each way to get to the one I attended.
Some people on my course were living on a tight budget so the costs of public transport or a taxi were a problem, and not surprisingly walking to the venue was an issue!
I will look at the survey, Bethany, but I just wanted to say that I was very disappointed when I attended a pulmonary rehab course at my local physio department for 6 weeks during the winter of 2015/2016.
The programme was not tailored to individual needs, the lead physiotherapist skipped the information talks each time he ran the ssession and very often the 2 hour session finished after 45 minutes.
Some of his colleagues did do the talks when they were running the session but the whole course was very disjointed. I still find it somewhat annoying when people praise rehab and highly recommend it as I could not do the same from my experience.
From my perspective, the aim of the Royal College of Physicians, if achieved, will be doing all with lung disease a service if the rehab courses can be accredited and be of a high standard throughout the NHS.
Wow! What a disappointment ☹️ I was lucky that mine was excellent, and was sadly terminated a week early by the start of lockdown; However, we were then told we had a direct line into the respiratory physios and hospital consultants if we had any Covid issues - that has been very reassuring.
That's awful. And just the type of thing we want to prevent by introducing the accreditation scheme. I hope you get the chance to go on a better course in future.
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