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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychological Therapy and Psychosomatics
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1434779

Cardiac Rehabilitation practitioners' views on patients' psychological needs: A qualitative study

Provisionally accepted
Laura Wray Laura Wray 1Lora Capobianco Lora Capobianco 2Adrian Wells Adrian Wells 1,2*
  • 1 The University of Manchester, Manchester, England, United Kingdom
  • 2 Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background Psychological difficulties are prevalent in patients who attend Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR). Recent guidelines recommend practitioners enquire and support patients' psychological concerns within CR. Therefore, Study One aimed to explore practitioners' understanding of patients' psychological needs, their confidence in supporting those needs and views on whether current CR meets patients' needs.Study Two aimed to validate Study Ones' findings among a wider sample of CR practitioners.One utilised qualitative interview data from the PATHWAY trial (REC Reference:15/NW/0163), while Study Two utilised new interview data collected as part of the PATHWAY Beacons study (REC reference: 22/HRA/2220). In Study One semi-structured interviews with six CR practitioners were analysed using thematic analysis. In Study Two, 11 CR practitioners across England were interviewed using member checking principles. Transcripts were coded systematically using the codes developed from Study One and, through constant comparative analysis.Results: Four main themes were identified: staff's awareness of mental health problems faced, CR patients' needs, staff's self-efficacy to support patients' psychological needs, and current psychological provision in CR. The main themes, and 11 subthemes were transferable to a wider range of CR practitioners, indicating trustworthiness of the findings.Practitioners described patients experience a range of psychological concerns, including adjustment difficulties, anxiety, cardiac and non-cardiac worries.Most practitioners normalise patients' concerns and offer relaxation techniques. However, practitioners noted patients often have complex psychological needs, but practitioners' confidence in discussing and supporting psychological concerns varies.Practitioners expressed a need to be trained to support patients' psychological needs.

    Keywords: Cardiac Rehabilitation, Mental Health, Qualitative, Anxiety, Psychological Needs

    Received: 18 May 2024; Accepted: 09 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Wray, Capobianco and Wells. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Adrian Wells, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, M25 3BL, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.