KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE, AND PRACTICE OF CARDIAC REHABILITATION AMONG PHYSICIANS: PREDICTORS AND BARRIERS

BACKGROUND Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a supervised multidisciplinary secondary prevention program strongly recommended by major guidelines for patients recovering from cardiovascular events, with proven benefits including reduction in hospitalizations and mortality. Despite being a class 1 recommendation in major guidelines, the knowledge and practice of cardiac rehabilitation is suboptimal especially in low resource settings. METHODOLOGY This study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of cardiac rehabilitation among physicians, identify predictors to good knowledge and practice, and assess perceived barriers to the implementation of cardiac rehabilitation. It is a cross-sectional questionnaire-based study among 63 physicians using structured, self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics on SPSS was used to summarize physician’s attributes. Good knowledge and practice were set at getting at least 66.7% of the knowledge questions correct and answering yes to the same percentage of practice questions respectively. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05.

RESULTS 63 participants responded to this questionnaire. 30 were house officers, 3 medical officers, 19 registrars, 7 senior registrars and 4 consultants. 23.8% (15) had never heard of cardiac rehabilitation. 47.9% (23) demonstrated good knowledge while 33.3 (16) demonstrated good practice. Greater than 90% had good attitude towards CR. Lack of knowledge and affordability were the top barriers identified. Having worked with a cardiologist was the only factor found to increase the odds of good knowledge and practice.

CONCLUSION There is both poor knowledge and practice of cardiac rehabilitation among physicians in this study with working with a cardiologist being the only positive predictor