Heart Rehabilitation Centre s Benefits

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31009, 15 March 1966, Page 18

Heart Rehabilitation Centre s Benefits

A country like New Zealand with overfull employment would get good value from rehabilitation centres like those run in Australian state capitals by the National Heart Foundation, said Dr. W. A. Seldon, a Sydney cardiologist, in Christchurch yesterday.

Dr. Seldon, physician in charge of the foundation’s rehabilitation unit in Sydney, said more than 3000 persons had been seen by the unit in three years, and 620 of them had returned to work. “In a country with more jobs than workers you need every hand you can get,” he said. “Our star patient is a man who is now back at work after being on a pension for his heart condition for the last 15 years.

“We estimate we have saved the Australian Government £90,000 in pensions and social service benefits for those who have returned to work.”

However the foundation’s main concern was the benefit to the individual heart patient “One of our major findings,” said Dr. Seldon, "has been that it is not very difficult to rehabilitate a heart patient physically, but that it is the psychological problems that incapacitate people—anxiety, over-empha-sis on the ill-effects of their disease rather than on their residual capacity.” He said some patients had underlying personality defects which aggravated their problem. The foundation's clinic had a consultant psychiatrist and it had been found that 22 per cent of

heart patients had psychological problems needing expert advice. Help Given “To a large extent we have been able to help them,” said Dr. Seldon. “About half of those with psychological problems have been helped by psychiatric treatment enough to get back to work.” Cases had been f ollowed up, and it had been found that the return to work in no instance caused any deterioration in the patient’s heart condition. “More important from the employers’ point of view—there has been no case of compensation,” he said. “When a patient is put in a iob both the employer and the employee know what the patient is capable of doing. "Provided that a heart patient is adequately placed in a job, his ability to do that job is equal to that of a fit man. and his disability becomes of no significance.

“In a certain number of instances people have been held back by over-solicitude from their families. If a wife is over-protective and fusses too much, it has a bad effect on her husband’s rehabilitation. Our social workers interview the wives and families if possible and advise them on this. It can really be quite a problem.”

Dr. Seldon said the Commonwealth Employment Service worked with the rehabilitation centre, which also had its own full-time employment adviser. In some cases persons had to be retrained for alternative jobs, and this was done through the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service Dr. Seldon will be in New Zealand for three weeks as the the 1966 Mackenzie family lecturer to the New Zealand Post-graduate Federation.