Cardiac rehabilitation has been shown to improve outcomes in patients with heart disease. Determining the effect cardiac rehabilitation (CR) has on the quality of life (QOL) of patients who have participated in a CR program is an important health outcome measure. The majority of QOL studies have focused primarily on younger patients with little attention devoted to the elderly. The purpose of this descriptive, comparative study was to determine whether participation or lack of participation in a CR program will affect the perceived QOL of elderly patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). The Sickness Impact Profile (SIP) was used to measure QOL of two groups, those who participated in CR and those who did not participate in CR. A demographic inventory was used to collect sociodemographic information. The mean SIP scores for the physical and psychosocial dimensions, as well as the overall SIP score revealed less dysfunction for the group that participated in CR thereby indicating a better quality of life for this group. However, other methods of data analysis were not statistically significant. Although the results of this study were not statistically significant, they may be of clinical significance as indicated by the mean SIP scores and the percent of non-overlap scores. Education of the older patient and the public about the beneficial effects of CR on QOL is a prime responsibility of nurse practitioners.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:rtd-3189 |
| Date | 01 January 1999 |
| Creators | Mehring, Margaret S. |
| Publisher | University of Central Florida |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Retrospective Theses and Dissertations |
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