Patient engagement 'crux' of COPD management
By HME News Staff
Updated Fri June 30, 2017
YARMOUTH, Maine - COPD patients are more likely to be active and participate in pulmonary rehab if they have social support, according to a report published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Researchers looked at the association between healthy behaviors and two kinds of social support: structural, the type of social network a person has such as being married or living with a partner or caregiver, and functional, the support a person perceives his/her social network provides. They found that participants who: lived with others took 903 more steps each day; had a spouse or partners were 11 times more likely to participate in rehab; and were more likely to receive a pneumococcal vaccine and slightly less likely to smoke. “Patient engagement in self-care is the crux of COPD management,” said senior study author Huong Q. Nguyen, PhD, RN, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente Southern California and an affiliate associate professor at the University of Washington. “Our goal with this study was to identify factors associated with self-care activities, including physical activity, quitting smoking, participating in a rehab program, adherence to medications, and getting influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations.”
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