Your Healthy Heart
Heart problems are one of the biggest health concerns facing citizens in Nottingham. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the largest cause of death in the city across all ages, with only cancer causing more death in under 75s.
While it’s important for everyone to maintain good heart health, certain groups of people are at higher risk of CVD. These include:
- Men aged 50+
- People from South Asian, Black African, or African Caribbean ethnic background
- Smokers
- People high blood pressure or cholesterol
- Those with a family history of heart problems
To increase awareness of the importance of heart health to those most at risk, Bestwood & Sherwood PCN have started running their ‘Your Healthy Heart’ hub.
The hub is an innovative space where high-risk patients are invited to get advice, guidance, and health checks to ensure they are in good cardio-vascular health. These half-day sessions are a relaxed environment for patients where they are provided non-judgmental advice on how they can reduce their risk.
At these sessions attendees will get one-to-one time with a range of healthcare professionals. These include:
- Health & Wellbeing Coaches – Provide advice on how patients can live a healthier lifestyle by making changes to diet and getting active.
- Clinical pharmacists – Provide ECG and heart-rhythm checks to assess any immediate risk of heart problems present.
- Thriving Nottingham staff – Signpost and refer attendees to their stop smoking and weight-loss services.
To illustrate how this innovative approach can benefit patients, we’ve put together a short video showing what the sessions are all about. This can be shared with colleagues across the network, as well as directly to patients who are hesitant about attending.
Watch here:
We have received so much good feedback from these sessions so far and look forward to running more in the future. We hope it inspires other PCNs inside and outside Nottingham to run similar sessions and think outside the box to reduce rates of CVD.