Online rehab program for rural lung patients to expand across Maritimes
CBC
When Lily MacDonald first signed in to an online workout session for women with COPD, she was sure she wasn't going to like it. She couldn't imagine doing an effective workout at her kitchen table.
"At first I thought, 'How can I exercise, what am I going to do?'" said MacDonald, who lives in Glace Bay, N.S.
She was one of the first participants in a pilot project to offer virtual physical rehabilitation to lung patients in rural parts of the province.
The project went so well it will expand across the Maritimes this fall.
"I felt great, I really did," MacDonald said. "As it happens, you live by yourself, you have no motivation, but I started back into exercising."
Nova Scotia Health estimates that 86,000 people — or 13 per cent of the population — have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is often caused by exposure to smoke. Those rates are some of the highest in the country.
That worried Carley O'Neill, an assistant professor in Acadia University's kinesiology program and a clinical exercise physiologist. She says COPD patients often complain of being out of breath.
"Exercise can really help to reduce that symptom," she said. "That's really going to help slow the rate of progression for this condition."
Living in Wolfville, O'Neill saw the limitations of rehab programs that were limited to those who could attend in-person.
She said a lot of people in rural areas were not getting the support they needed because they couldn't get to class.
She worked with one of her students, Amanda Daniels, and the two launched a virtual class. They offered it to about 50 women across the province. The participants ranged in age from 43 to 86.
"We wanted to start small before we upscale it to see what we could do," she said.
The women were divided into small groups and met online twice a week to work out from home.
They were mailed packages that included workout bands and pulse oximeters, small devices that monitor oxygen levels throughout the workout.
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