Table 6.
Participants perceptions of the facilitators and barriers to group and home-based exercise
| Exercise setting | Facilitators | Barriers |
| Group community or gym-based exercise | ‘There is something about the group dynamics. When you try and do it on your own you can't really focus. It’s just so much easier to do as a group than an individual, especially if you have got motivational problems and you’re having to do this (dialysis)’. (Male, vulnerable) | ‘I was lucky enough that my wife was off so she took me and brought me, otherwise transport was a problem, sometimes I used to take a taxi because hospital transport you can’t trust it’. (Male, moderately frail) |
| ‘Better to be in a group, because when you see other people doing it, you just automatically join in and you feel like she can do it why not me?’ (Female, mildly frail) | ‘I have only got Tuesday and Thursday and most of the days that cropped up (to attend a falls prevention programme) they are either on a Wednesday or a Friday when I couldn’t go because I have dialysis’. (Male, mildly frail) | |
| ‘We are all in the same boat. You can say "How are you going on this week? You know you are on dialysis, are you finding this OK?" and you can get notes from them’. (Female, severely frail) | ‘Apparently because of my complex problems and disabilities he (participants GP) doesn’t think anyone at the gym is sufficiently qualified to tell me which exercises are best’. (Female, moderately frail) | |
| ‘I would love to go to the gym and start sorting myself, but it’s just a normal gym where normal keep-fit people go, so I have never ended up there’. (Female, vulnerable) | ||
| Home-based | ‘When you are at home exercise is normal it really is. If you are going upstairs to get something you don’t think…I am not going up there to get that. You go upstairs and get it because that’s part of your everyday life’. (Male, moderately frail) | ‘It’s just the room that you have got where you can do exercise…if you haven’t got that it’s very difficult’. (Female, moderately frail) |
| ‘I can’t do anything in the home. There is no-one there, I’m alone, what if anything happens?’ (Male, mildly frail) | ||
| ‘I am nervous about practising at home because if I couldn’t get up, I don’t want my husband hurting his back. I shall have to wait until a friend comes around and they could both help me’. (Female, moderately frail) |