Background
Over 1.2 million people living in the UK have a lung disease known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) which causes people to get short of breath. A treatment that helps with shortness of breath is an exercise and education programme called pulmonary rehabilitation (called rehab for short). However, only a small number of people are referred for and start rehab. People from ethnic minority groups, those living in poor areas, women and older people are less likely to be referred. Increasing the number of people receiving rehab is an urgent NHS priority.
In the past, there were similar problems with the referral of smokers to stop smoking services. However, a way of changing people’s behaviour, called Very Brief Advice, has increased the number of people referred for support and who stop smoking. Very Brief Advice, which is widely used in the NHS, involves an online training course for healthcare workers that teaches them how to discuss a referral to stop smoking services with smokers. Changing Very Brief Advice so it can be used by healthcare workers to discuss a rehab referral with people with COPD may be a way to increase the number of people who agree to be referred to rehab.
Therefore the aim of this study is to work with with different types of people living with COPD, their carers/family and healthcare workers to change Very Brief Advice so it can be used by healthcare workers to discuss a rehab referral with people with COPD. This will be called Very Brief Advice for rehab.
Our research
People living with COPD, their carers/family and healthcare workers will be interviewed. This is to understand the problems around rehab referral and how Very Brief Advice can be changed to discuss a rehab referral.
Together, people living with with COPD, healthcare workers, researchers and the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training, the organisation that developed Very Brief Advice for smoking, will co-design Very Brief Advice and the online training course to teach healthcare workers how to use Very Brief Advice to discuss a rehab referral. We will then do another study to look at whether Very Brief Advice for rehab works in the real world.
If it is shown to be effective, Very Brief Advice for rehab can be established nationally using the Very Brief Advice for smoking website. It will educate healthcare professionals, increase pulmonary referral and uptake rates which will help people living with COPD, for example, improved quality of life and reduced number of hospital admissions, and the NHS including reduced healthcare resource use and costs.
Meet the Principal Investigator(s) for the project
Dr Claire Nolan - Dr Claire Nolan is a Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy in the Department of Health Sciences and an NIHR Advanced Fellow with clinical expertise in pulmonary rehabilitation.
Dr Nolan completed her PhD in Imperial College London in 2018 on gait speed and prognosis in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Dr Nolan’s research interests include strategies to increase engagement in and alternative models of rehabilitation programmes for people living with chronic lung conditions and multiple long-term conditions. She has expertise in intervention co-design, mixed-methodologies, as well as feasibility and randomised controlled trials.
Dr Nolan is Chair Elect of the American Thoracic Society Pulmonary Rehabilitation Assembly Programme Committee, a committee member of the NHSE National Respiratory Programme and the British Thoracic Society Quality Standards for Pulmonary Rehabilitation committee, and Impact Champion for the Department of Health Sciences, Brunel University.
Partnering with confidence
Organisations interested in our research can partner with us with confidence backed by an external and independent benchmark: The Knowledge Exchange Framework. Read more.
Project last modified 31/08/2024