Awareness Level of the Healthcare Professionals about Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation: A CrossSectional Study

Abstract

We aimed to determine the awareness level of the healthcare professionals about cardiopulmonary rehabilitation (CPR)and to compare the level of CPR awareness according to occupation and practice setting among the healthcare professionals. Thiscross-sectional survey study included physicians, nurses and physiotherapists who were working in a university hospital in whichCPR service was available at the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PMR). Physicians of different specialties(including PMR, cardiology, thoracic diseases, internal medicine), nurses and physiotherapists were asked to fill out the survey.This survey was developed by CPR study group of PMR association and consisted of three parts. Descriptive statistics were used todescribe demographic characteristics. Knowledge level of the participants was evaluated based on occupation and practice settings.Chi-square test was used to compare the answers to the items based on occupational group and practice settings. A total of 90volunteers from four different clinics were included in this study. Among the participants, 55.6% were physicians, 27.8% werenurses, 16.7% were physiotherapists. Responses from the third section of the survey revealed that 84.4% of the participants werefamiliar with CPR. On the other hand statistically lower rate of nurses knew a CPR center to which they could refer their patientscompared to physicians and physiotherapists (p<0.05). Almost all of the participants who were practice in PMR department werefamiliar with CPR, however about two third of participants who were practice other departments were familiar with CPR (p<0.05).This study indicates that healthcare professionals have some knowledge about CPR. However in our opinion it is essential to findout new methods, novel strategies to increase the awareness of CPR in nurses as well as healthcare professionals who were notpractice in PMR department.