A Pulmonary Rehabilitation Shared Decision Making Intervention

Whilst Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR) is an evidence-based intervention for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), the service suffers poor referral and uptake. One identified barrier to accessing PR at the University Hospitals of Leicester is healthcare professionals beliefs about patient motivation (e.g. believing patients to be unmotivated reduces their desire to offer PR). This shows healthcare professionals have conscious (explicit) bias but little is known about whether they also have unconscious (implicit) bias. It is important to measure this as it can also shape individuals attitudes and therefore referral behaviour. The first objective of this study is to measure healthcare professionals implicit bias. Healthcare professionals from the United Kingdom who refer patients to PR will be invited to complete a one-off computerised Implicit Association Test, adapted to measure their bias towards the behaviours of patients living with COPD (i.e. smoking, exercising). The second objective of this study is to test the feasibility and acceptability of a shared decision making intervention (a patient decision aid and decision coaching for PR specialists). Patients with COPD will receive the decision aid upon referral to PR and encouraged to use it to support their PR decision making. At their PR assessment they will engage in a shared decision making consultation with their trained PR specialist to decide on their preferred PR programme. Following completion/drop out from PR, patients and trained PR specialists will be invited to take part in either a focus group (patients) or interview (PR specialist) to discuss the acceptability of the intervention.