Paper 3: physiotherapy at the work assessment centre, national heart foundation, melbourne

The Centre has been using physiotherapy for assessment and training for the last eight years and currently we have 30 men attending twice weekly for exercise sessions. They usually attend from one to three months. The programme aims at three things: 1. to provide a bridge between sitting at home doing nothing and going back to competitive full-time employment; 2. to teach the patient what a reasonable amount of exercise feels like and that this amount is quite safe, and how to cope with any associated discomfort; 3. to establish an upper limit of performance, for example, recurrent angina may occur on lifting 60 lb. weights or less. This performance is then related to the patient's work situation and their physical capacity chart.