ABOUT

Impact on the person with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) quality of life.

 

COPD is a debilitating disorder and reduces lung compliance.

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Common symptoms include limited airflow, breathlessness and fatigue when participating in activities of daily life which can reduce quality of life.

  

From 2020 COPD will be the third largest cause of death in the UK and costs the NHS up to £1.9bn each year (Rehman et al., 2019).

 

COPD creates significant challenges to the NHS services when developing clinical and psychological strategies to manage the high demand (The NHS Long Term Plan, 2019).

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Impact of COPD on carers quality of life

Carers have an important role in the patient’s recovery and the NHS plans to invest funding, to provide vital support, for the carers in society (The NHS Long Term Plan, 2019).

 

Thus, it is important to develop a greater understanding of factors that could be affecting their own quality of life and the psychological impact of caring for their partner who lives with COPD.

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Given the similar psychological impacts on carers and COPD patients, this research could help to develop psychological interventions, potentially making them more robust, while providing new theoretical insight which can be added to existing research in this area.   

 

Aim

Therefore, it is paramount to explore further how COPD is impacting on day-to-day quality of life for both yourself with COPD and the person that cares/supports you.

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The aim is to figure out a way we could create an intervention that could reduce the negative impact of COPD and therefore increase your quality of life.