Pulmonary Rehabilitation

Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR) is aimed at people who have breathing difficulties caused by a lung condition, which affects their ability to do normal activities. PR is an exercise and education programme designed to help you live better with your breathing problems.

Your age and the severity of your condition will not stop you from taking part in PR, or from seeing an improvement. Completing a course of PR is a good way to learn how to increase your activity levels and exercise at the right level for you in a safe and sociable environment. Research tells us that PR leads to improvements in your ability to walk further and in your quality of life. PR should help you to feel less breathless doing day-to-day activities, such as walking, climbing stairs or inclines, shopping and dressing.

It helps you by:

• Helping you to manage your breathlessness. 
• Making you fitter. 
• Reducing anxiety and depression. 
• Improving your quality of life.

It does this by:

• Exercise - the exercises are designed to strengthen your muscles, and therefore improve your fitness and help your breathing. 
• Education - this covers a wide variety of topics, helping you to understand how to live with and manage lung disease.
• Support - Pulmonary rehabilitation gives you a chance to meet others in a similar situation and share experiences. There is access to a range of healthcare professionals who specialise in breathing problems. 

Any health professional can refer you to PR. There are 2 teams that provide PR in this area:

• LEEP (Lung Exercise and Education Programme) - runs at Cossham Hospital on Tuesday and Friday afternoons with input from the Respiratory Consultant team and other healthcare professionals from Southmead Hospital. 
• Sirona Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programme - runs in various locations across Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire.

You can attend whichever programme is most convenient to you. 

Wherever you attend PR, you will do 2 sessions per week, for 6 weeks, with each session lasting for up to 2 hours. 

Following referral you will be invited to an ‘Opt-in’ session at your local venue. This is a group session aimed at providing you with detailed information about the programme, the likely benefits to you and the options available, before you decide if you would like to participate and where you would like to do the programme.

Following Opt-in, an individual assessment will be booked for you with your chosen pulmonary rehabilitation venue.

How to contact us

© North Bristol NHS Trust. This edition published July 2024. Review due July 2027. NBT002775