Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
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Pre- programme Level of Fitness
Decline in fitness level
Maintenance of fitness level
Improvement of fitness level
Pre programme fitness was seen to be a strong predictor of both
post programme fitness (Degrees of freedom=12, f=13.637, level
of significance =0.0000) and the improvement in fitness (Degrees
of freedom=12, f=3.942, level of significance =0.0000)
Discussion
There was a significant improvement in fitness over the cardiac
rehabilitation programme. Many factors may have contributed to
this. The mean improvement seen here (1.04 MET’s ) is lower than
some previous studies where improvements of 3.1 to 4.7 MET’s
were observed (Turner et al 2002, Gulanick et al 2002). Despite the
increase in fitness still 8% of patients are below the 5 MET’s level,
the recommended BACR standards for a patient to be safe on a
community or home based exercise programme. In this study 56%
could still be categorised as sedentary – below 10 MET’s.
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