Accepted for/Published in: Interactive Journal of Medical Research
Date Submitted: Sep 5, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 12, 2024 - Nov 7, 2024
Date Accepted: Jan 21, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Exploring Barriers to Patients’ Progression in the Cardiac Rehabilitation Journey from Healthcare Providers’ Perspectives: Qualitative Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of mortality globally. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs are crucial for patients recovering from cardiac events, as they help reduce the risk of recurrent events and support patient recovery. The patient’s journey in CR spans the stages before, during, and after the program. Patients have to progress through each stage of CR programs successfully to complete the entire CR journey and get the full benefits of CR programs, but numerous barriers within this journey can hinder patient progression.
Objective:
To explore the barriers to progression at all stages of the CR patient journey from the perspectives of healthcare providers involved in CR care.
Methods:
This qualitative study involved semi-structured interviews with healthcare providers involved in CR care from July 2023 and January 2024. A purposive maximal variation sampling method was used to target providers with diverse demographics and specialties. Snowball sampling was used to recruit participants, leveraging the existing networks of participants. Each interview lasted between 30 and 45 minutes. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis approach. Data analysis was conducted from August 2023 to February 2024.
Results:
Ten healthcare providers, comprising seven females and three males, were interviewed. Their roles included physician, program director, nurse manager, clinical manager, nurse coordinator, nurse, physiotherapist, and kinesiologist. The analysis identified four overarching themes related to barriers to progression in the CR journey: (1) patients not being referred to CR programs, (2) patients not enrolling in CR programs, (3) patients dropping out of CR programs, and (4) patients’ lack of adherence to lifestyle changes post-CR programs.
Conclusions:
In light of the growing interest in technological interventions in CR programs, we proposed four potential technological solutions to address the barriers to progression identified in our analysis. These solutions aim to provide a foundation for future research and guide the development of effective technologies to enhance patient progression within the CR journey.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.