Ethnic minorities remain disadvantaged when accessing cardiac rehabilitation due to cultural behaviors, linguistic barriers, socioeconomic status, religious beliefs, and low referral rates.
What are the personal experiences and barriers faced by ethnic minorities regarding cardiac rehabilitation?
Ethnic minorities face significant barriers to accessing and utilizing cardiac rehabilitation, including cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, and systemic factors.
Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) can improve cardiovascular risk factors, decrease cardiac mortality, and promote healthy lifestyle behaviours. However, services remain underutilized by groups of ethnic minorities. The purpose of the study was to identify patients’ personal CR experiences to identify the differences CR makes towards minorities’ lifestyle. An initial electronic search was performed in 2021 for papers ranging from 2008–2020 across specific databases, including PubMed, EMBASE, APA PsycINFO, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), and Medline. Google Scholar was also used to supplement the search process and to identify studies performed within grey literature. A total of 1230 records were screened, of which 40 were assessed for eligibility. The final sample consisted of seven qualitative design studies that were identified for inclusion in this review. Based on patient personal experiences, this review identified that ethnic minorities continue to remain disadvantaged when accessing healthcare interventions, primarily as a result of cultural behaviours, linguistic barriers, socioeconomic status, religious and fatalistic beliefs, and low physician referral rates. More research is needed to elucidate this phenomenon and address these factors faced by ethnic minorities.
Tofani et al. (Sat,) conducted a review in Cardiac rehabilitation in ethnic minorities (n=7). Cardiac rehabilitation was evaluated on Patients' personal cardiac rehabilitation experiences and lifestyle differences. Ethnic minorities remain disadvantaged when accessing cardiac rehabilitation due to cultural behaviors, linguistic barriers, socioeconomic status, religious beliefs, and low referral rates.