Lifestyle Management for Patients With Coronary Heart Disease (Current Issues in Cardiac Rehabilitation, Monograph No. 2)

Changing lifelong habits and adopting new behaviors is a difficult but necessary task for heart patients. As a health care professional, you must play an active role in assisting patients who face this challenge in order to reduce coronary heart disease (CHD) risk. Lifestyle Management for Patients With Coronary Heart Disease provides you with techniques for helping patients change their unhealthy behaviors and improve their quality of life following a CHD event.

Drawing upon more than 20 years of research and clinical experience in the Stanford Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, authors Nancy Houston Miller and Craig Barr Taylor present behavioral interventions and explain how to apply the interventions in a wide variety of health care settings. You will find separate chapters on specific risk factors, including

- exercise,
- smoking,
- diet,
- stress, and
- medications.

Each of these chapters provides methods for helping patients not only adopt but also maintain lifestyle changes in these areas. You'll find 19 assessment tools and patient resources such as questionnaires and logs to help facilitate lifestyle change. You'll also find information on

- elements of a successful behavioral program;
- educational methods for behavior change, including printed materials, video, computers, telephone calls, and group interventions; and
- psychological issues that may affect a patient's ability to change—depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, social support and marital status, and stress and anger.

Although the primary focus of this monograph is on patients with established CHD, many of the principles can also be applied to patients at high risk for developing cardiovascular disease. All health care professionals who work with cardiovascular patients, especially those involved in education and counseling, will want to own a copy of this comprehensive and practical guide.