Paper: Analysis of Functional Activities Not Performed by People with COPD (40th Biennial Convention (October 31st- November 4th, 2009))

Sunday, November 1, 2009: 4:35 PM

Mary Patricia Wall, PhD, RN
School of Nursing, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY

Learning Objective 1: identify three specific functional activities that COPD patients no longer perform due to their health.

Learning Objective 2: identify two categories of functional activities that represent general challenges to COPD patients.

Purpose: These secondary analyses were conducted to identify activities no longer performed by COPD patients as a result of their health challenges. Patients omitting functional activities from their lives for health reasons were compared to respondents who continued to perform those activities, but with much difficulty. The goal was to identify targets for nurse-sensitive interventions.

Method: The Functional Performance Inventory-Short Form (FPI-SF) was completed by all participants in the original study (n = 119, 68 years, 54% male). This 32-item instrument measures the difficulty with which COPD patients perform a variety of functional activities. Respondents have the option of indicating that they no longer perform activities for health reasons. Data analysis strategies included descriptive statistics and frequencies. Independent t tests and Mann-Whitney tests were used to assess for differences between groups on physical, well-being, and coping resource attributes (p<.05).

Findings: Only two activities (dressing/undressing and showering/bathing) were still performed by all participants. The activities omitted by the largest percentage of patients were yard care (32.2%), taking long walks (31.4%), and activities such as swimming and biking (27.7%). Physical exercise activities had the highest mean number of patients reporting that activities were no longer done for health reasons (21), followed by household maintenance activities (14 people). No overall pattern of differences was found for the two groups under study.

Discussion: The elimination of strenuous activities by chronically ill adults is not surprising. The high number of participants not engaging in physical activity is concernful, particularly in light of the demonstrated importance of exercise in maintaining general health. The challenge to nurses is to identify activities these patients can and will perform. These findings have relevance in the continuing care of community-dwelling COPD patients, and are particularly important for nurses engaged in primary care, home care, and case management.

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