Peter Halliwell’s cardiac rehabilitation happened in a machinery shed, which his physiotherapist has never once described as ideal and has repeatedly described as better than nothing.
Risk factor work is unglamorous and continues indefinitely. It is also, by a wide margin, the part of the pathway with the most evidence behind it.
Acute care was never the weak point. The ambulance was fast, the intervention was routine, and discharge came in five days. What almost failed was everything after.
The alternative wasn’t a gym. The alternative was no rehab at all, for eleven weeks, at the point it matters most.
Illustrative composite
Uploads were reviewed twice weekly. The calls that followed were rarely about anything dramatic — a heart rate recovery that had drifted the wrong way across four sessions, that sort of thing.
He finished all twelve sessions. Attendance in the remote cohort ran higher than the centre-based one that year.
