Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Experts recommend that individuals experiencing a worsening in symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) participate in pulmonary rehabilitation within 4 weeks of being discharged from hospital. However, recent research studies showed that healthcare providers experience many barriers to referring patients to PR (e.g. lack of time, lack of understanding about who should participate in PR). Patients also experience barriers to participation in PR (e.g. transport issues, financial situation, lacking of understanding the benefits of PR). The purpose of our research activity is to bring together healthcare professionals, researchers, patients and their caregivers to identify important research questions in this complex scenario of offering rehabilitation while individuals with COPD are experiencing a worsening in their symptoms.. We also aim to build a research team that has the capacity to address the identified research directions. A unique aspect of our planning activity is that it will bring together people with different clinical and research expertise from across Canada. These clinicians and researchers have great interest in PR but are not currently engaged in collaborative research with each other in this field.