Pulmonary Rehabilitation – Portsmouth City & Hampshire

About the service

The Pulmonary Rehabilitation team provides combined exercise and education classes to patients with specific long-term respiratory conditions, such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Bronchiectasis, Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILDs) and Asthma (commissioned in Portsmouth City only).

We work out of various venues across Hampshire so that we are more accessible and to reduce travel costs for our patients. We review our locations regularly and they are subject to change based on patient demand and feasibility. 

What we do

We run 90-minute classes twice-weekly for six weeks at venues across Hampshire. The 45-60 minute exercise portion of our classes consist of a warm-up, muscle strengthening exercises, a stamina section and a cool-down, with the aim of improving your fitness so that you are better able to deal with some of the symptoms associated with your lung condition. We will not push you to do something you are uncomfortable doing, and we encourage all our patients to work to their own ability and take rests if you need it.

In the education, we cover various topics to improve knowledge on your condition and help you to have more control over the impact of your lung diagnosis. We provide you with an education pack with all the topics that you can use for future reference with online resources to guide you too.

Topics include:

• How your lungs work
• Long term lung conditions
• Why exercise?
• Home exercise program and onwards community exercise options
• Airway clearance and managing continence issues
• Action planning and future care planning
• Energy conservation
• Anxiety and relaxation
• Medications
• Nutrition
• Local charity and peer support
• Benefits and pensions / Q & A

Ongoing maintenance: We offer referrals onto certain exercise maintenance programmes for our patients after they have finished their 6-week course with us. We strongly encourage our patients to carry on exercising, whether that's through local referral schemes, completing their own exercise, or using our education pack to follow the set exercises at home. Exercise is a prescribed part of the management for people with long term lung conditions and is as important as the medications prescribed for these conditions. We want all of our patients to continue exercising after our course to maintain and improve their strength and stamina gains and improve the management of their condition.

Our multi-disciplinary team work together as one, to deliver an evidence-based exercise and education rehabilitation treatment and care service for people with long term lung conditions.

Being passionate and creative about our work, enables us to develop new ways of working, through listening to our patients and each other, whilst collaborating with wider organisations to provide excellent patient centred care.

Accessing the service

Your GP will refer you to us if they think you are suitable for the programme, you can ask them if Pulmonary Rehab is right for you and what’s available in your area. You may be able to bring a family member or carer with you. Some programmes will have waiting lists, so the sooner you act, the sooner you can start.

Once you have been referred, you will have a 45-minute initial assessment with a respiratory specialist, to assess how you are coping with your lung condition. This will involve a walking test, some questionnaires and a discussion with the clinician.

If suitable you will be asked to attend one of our tailored programmes. If this isn’t suitable for you, other options will be discussed.

Our team will see you up to twice a week for 6 weeks, then you will have a reassessment and discuss your onward exercise plan.

Referral criteria:

• Confirmed diagnosis of COPD/ Bronchiectasis/ILD, Asthma (Portsmouth City only) where daily living activities are limited by breathlessness
• Patients experiencing decreasing exercise tolerance
• On optimum drug therapy
• Motivated to attend and complete all sessions

Exclusion criteria:

• Breathlessness caused by other ailment e.g. heart failure
• Recovering from a recent heart attack
• Unstable blood pressure (higher than 180/100) or cardiac symptoms
• Psychiatric, cognitive or locomotor problems which would prevent participation in exercise or group

If you have previously attended a complete programme and you don’t have outstanding respiratory exercise and educational needs, please consider community options to support your activity levels rather than reusing a NHS resource. Please contact the team if you are unsure where to start with this.

Healthcare professionals:

Please complete our most up to date referral form, available on Systm1 and Ardens and email it across to pulmonary-rehabports@solent.nhs.uk or post to our office. Please ensure all sections are correctly filled, as this will avoid delay to patient care.