At times of dire health, patients often turn to God for spiritual support.
Apparently, that’s a good idea according to results of a pilot study on 21 cardiac rehabilitation patients (11 men, 10 women) averaging 61 years of age from Pennsylvania’s Geisinger Health System.
It found that patients with strong religious beliefs had greater confidence to perform physical tasks during rehab, and ultimately saw greater perceptions of physical abilities during the 12-week program.
Dr. Timothy McConnell, director of cardiac rehabilitation and faculty development at Geisinger led a team of researchers in the study. Geisinger provides health care services to 2.5 million patients in 38 primarily rural counties of Pennsylvania.
He was joined by Charles Laubach, the former chair of the department of cardiology at Geisinger who is now associate medical director of the Geisinger Health Plan; as well as Chris Boyatzis, a professor of psychology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.; and Bucknell psychology students Laura Baldwin and Kelly McConnell.
Finding the connection
They wrote a paper titled “Spiritual and Religious Associations with Quality of Life and Self-Efficacy for the Elderly Patient in Cardiac Rehabilitation,” which was published by The Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation, as well as The American Journal of Geriatric Cardiology — both professional journals.
McConnell presented this research at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation, Sept. 25–29, in Charlotte, N.C.
The researchers arranged the subjects by age to determine associations regarding spirituality and religiosity — their religious practices vs. their spiritual beliefs — and then administered four questionnaires that measured the following:
- Religiosity measure
- Spiritual and religious concerns
- Quality of life
- Self-efficacy (confidence to perform physical tasks)
At the start of the cardiac rehabilitation program, age was significantly related with ritual religion — the ways people go about practicing their religion, such as praying, going to church, etc. — and overall religiosity, emotional quality of life and self-efficacy.
But regardless of age, the researchers found that ritual and overall religiosity were related to a patient’s self-efficacy at the start of the program, and ultimately their improvement through its duration — although there were no significant relationships with quality of life.
“It appeared that [strong religion helping their rehab] was a trend across the decades. So you could say that people who were more religious had greater faith and confidence in what they wanted to do [in cardiac rehab],” McConnell said.
“Greater religiosity improved their confidence the most from the beginning of the program until the end. Since there’s usually a direct relationship between confidence level and what you are willing to undertake [during rehab], it [stronger religious faith] appeared to help them recover better,” he said.
Further research needed
“From this small cohort, it appears that age is positively related with religiosity and spiritual concerns that may impact self-efficacy and quality of life — particularly emotional.
“A larger cohort analysis needs to be performed to determine whether religiosity and spirituality have age-disparate impacts on outcomes after cardiac rehabilitation, and whether the enhanced religiosity improves coping with heart disease,” McConnell continued.
According to McConnell, a larger study — with a target of 100 cardiac rehabilitation patients looking at long-term (five-year) outcomes in first-time heart attack and bypass patients — is currently under way.
It is being funded by the administrative council for research at Geisinger’s Weis Center for Research. (RPRS)
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