Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Feb 26, 2022; 14(2): 83-95
Published online Feb 26, 2022. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v14.i2.83
Barriers and facilitators to participating in cardiac rehabilitation and physical activity: A cross-sectional survey
Matthew James Fraser, Stephen J Leslie, Trish Gorely, Emma Foster, Ronie Walters
Matthew James Fraser, Division of Biomedical Science, University of the Highlands and Islands, Inverness IV2 3JH, United Kingdom
Stephen J Leslie, Department of Cardiology, NHS Highland, Inverness IV2 3UJ, United Kingdom
Trish Gorely, Ronie Walters, Department of Nursing and Midwifery, University of the Highlands and Islands, Inverness IV2 3JH, United Kingdom
Emma Foster, Cardiac Unit NHSH, NHS Highland, Inverness IV2 3JH, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Foster E, Gorely T and Leslie S designed the research study; Foster E and Leslie S performed the research; Fraser M, Gorely T and Walters R analysed the data; Fraser M, Gorely T, Walters R and Leslie S wrote the manuscript; All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Bromley Research Ethics Committee (study reference number 17/LO/1389, project number 231385).
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: The codebook containing the participants’ anonymised quotations is provided as supplementary material.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Matthew James Fraser, BSc, MSc, PhD, Postdoc, Division of Biomedical Science, University of the Highlands and Islands, Centre for Health Science, Old Perth Rd, Inverness IV2 3JH, United Kingdom. matthew.fraser@uhi.ac.uk
Received: September 23, 2021
Peer-review started: September 23, 2021
First decision: December 2, 2021
Revised: December 15, 2021
Accepted: January 29, 2022
Article in press: January 29, 2022
Published online: February 26, 2022
Processing time: 146 Days and 17.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: The exercise component of cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is considered key to the success of the programme. However, attendance of CR is sub-optimal. The current study examines cardiac patients’ opinions and attitudes around several key elements of CR. Participants provided several ideas going forward to get more patients taking part in CR, which at the moment is a real issue. Experiences around physical activity were also explored, and it was found that patients viewed this as contrasting to CR.