When looking at pulmonary health, one major concern is the increasing prevalence of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) as the disease has now made its way to third leading cause of death worldwide (World Health Organization, 2022). While there is no cure for COPD, there are ways in which we can treat symptoms and improve overall quality of life. Based on current research, pulmonary rehabilitation programs have shown to improve patient symptoms and quality of life while reducing exacerbations and hospitalization (Gloeckl et al., 2018).
When considering ways in which we can promote health and wellbeing among the COPD population, pulmonary rehabilitation programs provide an opportunity to not only rehabilitate patients physically, they also provide supportive peer environments and provide education on disease processes, smoking cessation and how to live well with COPD (American Lung Association, 2020). When looking at the Ottawa Charter strategies, these PR programs follow creating supportive environments and developing personal skills (WHO, 1986). The issue present in New Brunswick is that patients must be referred by a Respirologist. Firstly, there are not many Respirologists and secondly, there are not many community-based PR clinics. This results in long wait times for patients, which in turn results in a decline in their health in the way of exacerbations of COPD and hospitalizations. While currently, I am aware that these programs are being used for COPD patients post-exacerbation, I would like to learn more about how these programs are/can be incorporated into the care plans of patients with other respiratory illness diagnoses such as pulmonary fibrosis, cystic fibrosis, asthma, etc. If these programs have the ability to be incorporated into the care plans of patients with all kinds of disease processes, these programs could improve respiratory health on a much larger scale.
Throughout the course of my health promotion course journey, my biggest personal goal is to be more aware of the biases and experiences that I have that are rooted in my privilege. I would like to have better recognition over these things in order to not be complacent when looking at the situations at hand. I am most excited to learn more about how to we promote health and wellbeing to our patients and make an impact on population health however this also makes me nervous as it is a big undertaking and will require a lot of education and resources to make the changes happen. When looking at the opportunity I have chosen to focus on, the biggest challenge will be to show the need for reorienting health services to look at preventative care in the way of PR in hopes of improving quality of life and reducing the need for hospital resources and services.
References
American Lung Association. (2020). The Basics of Pulmonary Rehabilitation. https://www.lung.org/lung-health-diseases/lung-procedures-and-tests/pulmonary-rehab
Gloeckl, R., Schneeberger, T., Jarosch, I., & Kenn, K. (2018). Pulmonary Rehabilitation and Exercise Training in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Dtsch Arztebl Int., 115(8), 117-123. 10.3238/arztebl.2018.0117
World Health Organization. (2022, May 20). Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/chronic-obstructive-pulmonary-disease-(copd)
World Health Organization. (1986). Ottawa charter for health promotion, 1986 (No. WHO/EURO: 1986-4044-43803-61677). World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe. https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/phac-aspc/documents/services/health-promotion/population-health/ottawa-charter-health-promotion-international-conference-on-health-promotion/charter.pdf
Comentarios