This toolkit provides health professionals with practical, evidence-based guidance for
the provision of a pulmonary rehabilitation program.
The primary goals of pulmonary rehabilitation in people with chronic lung disease are to:
The structure and delivery of programs are diverse and dependent upon available resources, but the aims remain the same.
Although Pulmonary Rehabilitation is best delivered in centre-based setting, there are some emerging frameworks in place to deliver the service virtually.
The Australian and New Zealand Pulmonary Rehabilitation Guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations for the practice of pulmonary rehabilitation specific to Australian and New Zealand healthcare contexts. To access full guidelines or summarised version, visit the Lung Foundation Website.
A number of other pulmonary rehabilitation guidelines have been published such as the British Thoracic Society, 2 the American Thoracic Society(ATS), 3 the European Respiratory Society(ERS) 4 and The Canadian Thoracic Society Guidelines 5 .
There have been two Cochrane Reviews evaluating pulmonary rehabilitation in terms of the effect of on quality of life and exercise capacity 6 and the effect of on hospital readmissions after an exacerbation 7 .
