Making the Cardiac Patientʼs Work Easier

Abstract

Some years ago Lillian M. Gilbreth headed a voluntary subcommittee of the New York Heart Association's Committee on Cardiovascular Diseases in Industry. This subcommittee, which included authorities in industrial and management engineering, home economics, family relations, psychiatry, physical therapy, physiology, rehabilitation and architecture, studied methods by which industrial work-simplification techniques could be applied to household tasks. Upon this committee's recommendations the "Heart Kitchen" was established by the New York Heart Association to show heart-impaired homemakers and nurses how people can save their physical energy while they are carrying out household tasks. It has now been turned over to the New York University-Bellevue Medical Center. In the various cardiac clinics the authorities on work-classification help the health workers and patients by determining the patient's workpattern. They also help patients select jobs where the demands of their work are matched to their physical capacities. Tests conducted at the New York University-Bellevue Medical Center showed that, except for extremely heavy labor, almost all physical activities required in performing a job appear to be within the capacity of most people with heart disease. Most of these people can and do work. Generally, they are better off-finan-