Specialist nurses go on the road to raise awareness of heart failure
Specialist nurses and their colleagues are heading out on tour this week to help patients in their area to discover if they are among those who have heart failure without knowing it.
Cardiology staff at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust will be joining a community bus to spread the word about Heart Failure Awareness Week, which runs from today until 5 May.
“The events we have coming up in our hospitals and out in our communities will help get people thinking”
Mickey Jachuck
The aim of this year’s campaign is to ‘detect the undetected’ and help people think about whether they could be affected by the condition.
The information drive will stress the importance of early intervention to those who have heart failure, noted the trust.
It will also help make sure people get any treatment they need and are offered support to help them live well, it added.
An estimated one million people in the UK have heart failure, with 200,000 new diagnoses every year. But it is estimated that a further 400,000 people have it but are undetected or undiagnosed.
Across the trust, members of the cardiology team, including its specialist nurses, will be championing the Pumping Marvellous Foundation’s slogan Let’s BEAT Heart Failure.
BEAT stands for three of its symptoms and its prompt to act: Breathlessness, Exhaustion, Ankle swelling and Time for a simple blood test – ask your GP.
Members of the cardiology team, who are based at South Tyneside District Hospital, will be joining the Key Community Bus as it visits a series of locations during the week.
On 30 April, the bus will be on Campbell Park Road in Hebburn, from 10.30am to noon and then at Hedworthfield Community Association in Cornhill, Fellgate, Jarrow, from 12.30pm to 2pm.
On 1 May, the team will join the bus at the Rose and Crown pub in Prince Edward Road, South Shields, from 10.30am to noon and then Ocean Road Community Association from 12.30pm to 2pm.
Members of the cardiology service will also be promoting the campaign in the main entrance of the hospital and in its restaurant.
Their counterparts at Sunderland Royal Hospital will host a stall in its main entrance and be on hand during lunchtimes to chat to visitors, patients and colleagues.
Dr Mickey Jachuck, the trust’s clinical director for cardiothoracic medicine and clinical microbiology and infection, said: “Health failure doesn’t mean the heart is about to stop.
“The Pumping Marvellous Foundation call it ‘heart inefficiency’ which perhaps better describes it and explains that it means the heart isn’t working correctly,” he said.
“The events we have coming up in our hospitals and out in our communities will help get people thinking about whether they could be among those who are undiagnosed and take steps so they can look after their future.”
Heart failure specialist nurses Gemma Swinney (left) and Nikola Day (right) with advanced clinical pharmacist Janine Beezer, part of the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust cardiology team
