Pulmonary Rehabilitation

Patient Information Leaflet

What is pulmonary rehabilitation?

When you have a chronic lung disease, you can find it increasingly difficult to move about and do your normal daily activities without getting breathless. Pulmonary rehabilitation aims to help you cope with your breathlessness and to feel stronger and fitter.

Breathlessness can be frightening. Just one bad experience can cause people to avoid situations where they might become breathless, reducing the amount of activity they do. This can slowly cause weakness, tiredness and even more breathlessness.

Pulmonary rehabilitation can help to prevent this through exercise and education.

How does pulmonary rehabilitation help?

Pulmonary rehabilitation should:

Improve your exercise ability. You may find yourself walking further, finding day-to-day activities such as washing, dressing and shopping easier. You are likely to feel less tired too.
Help you cope with your breathlessness. It is very frightening to become breathless and pulmonary rehabilitation should help you to manage your breathlessness and have more control.
Increase your muscle strength and endurance, improve co-ordination and increase your understanding of your breathlessness. However, it is unlikely to change your lung function as measured by a spirometer.
Increase your knowledge and understanding of your lung condition and the best way to manage your symptoms.

What happens during pulmonary rehabilitation?

In Dudley, the pulmonary rehabilitation programme consists of an initial assessment, to include an incremental shuttle walking test, requiring you to complete 9m shuttles. This is to enable to team to gain a ‘baseline’ measure of your ability. The course then runs twice a week for a period of six weeks. There are approximately 12 people in a class.

Each session consists of a warm-up, upper and lower limb strengthening exercises, approximately 30 minutes of supervised aerobic exercise to include walking (you will not be expected to do anything that you are unable to do), followed by a cool down and guided relaxation. The exercise session is completed with guided relaxation.

Education

After each exercise session we cover an educational topic, including:

How the lungs work and what can go
Airway clearance
Benefits of
Managing
Coping with lung
Medication
Dietary

If you are interested in attending and haven’t already been referred, please speak with your GP or practice nurse who can refer you.

When and where do our classes run?

We currently run classes within four areas of Dudley:

Cradley Sports & Social Club Colley Lane, Halesowen, B63 2BU Wednesday and Friday (am)
Alderman Tye, Scout Hut (opposite Gigmill Pub) South Road, Stourbridge, DY8 3UL Wednesday and Friday (pm)
Kingswinford Methodist Church, 89 Stream Road, Kingswinford, DY6 9NP Tuesday and Thursday (pm)
Dudley Community Church, Salop Street, Dudley, DY1 3AT, Monday and Thursday (pm)

To discuss the option of virtual pulmonary rehabilitation sessions, or if you have any further questions, please contact the pulmonary rehabilitation team on 01384 323773.

Stourbridge Health and Social Care Centre, John Corbett Drive, Stourbridge, DY8 4JB.

For more information on Pulmonary Rehabilitation at The Dudley Group or visit http://www.dgft.nhs.uk/services-and-wards/pulmonary-rehabilitation/