Making Best Practice, Every Day Practice
Use this free downloadable results sheet to help you and your patients make the most of the NHS Health Check. In addition to recording all the test results, the sheet features a list of personal goals and healthy lifestyle tips for your patient to increase motivation.
This article provides an overview of gout, including its optimal treatment, links with cardiovascular disease and the value of European and UK guidelines.
Electronic cigarettes, e-cigs, vaporisers and the various other names given to these new devices have become a phenomenon. Their popularity over the past few years has grown significantly, with an expansion of highstreet e-cigarette shops, marketing via the internet and social media, as well as traditional approaches using print advertisement and mass media campaigns. Despite their increasing usage largely by smokers and ex-smokers, e-cigarettes have divided opinion as to whether they can offer real benefits or they are potentially damaging to public health. While a recent Public Health England review concluded that e-cigarettes could be prescribed to help smokers to quit, the Welsh government plans to restrict their use in the same way as for conventional cigarettes. This paper will present some of the main issues that surround e-cigarettes and highlight the potential consequences good and bad that this new technology may bring.
Good hydration is essential for health, especially for people who may not feel thirsty because of ageing or illness. Maintaining good levels of hydration can prevent or help in treating low blood pressure, urinary infections and constipation. It’s so easy to assess hydration status – this useful guide will help.
Colder days and longer nights are reminders that the annual winter flu season is here. It’s important to offer flu vaccination to vulnerable patients (young children, the elderly and people with underlying health conditions) to help prevent serious complications. This Back to Basics will help you to make sure that your practice is offering the right flu vaccine.
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is now classified using a combination of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and proteinuria measured by albumin:creatinine ratio (ACR). The aim is to more accurately define each patient’s risk of cardiovascular disease and worsening CKD, and to ensure that patients are monitored appropriately.
Volume 5, Supplement 1, September-October 2008
A round table meeting for practice nurses: 7 July 2008, London
Alcohol has been identified as one of Public Health England’s seven key priorities. After smoking and obesity, it is the biggest lifestyle risk factor for morbidity and mortality in the UK, accounting for 10% of disease and death. An estimated 9 million adults drink alcohol at levels detrimental to their health, with an estimated 1.6 million portraying signs of alcohol dependence. There is a misconception that drinking alcohol will only have a negative impact on health in those who binge drink or regularly get drunk. However, alcohol harms not only the individual drinker but also society as a whole, costing £21 billion a year, including annual direct costs to the NHS of £3.5 billion.
Practice nurses are in the frontline of the fight against obesity, yet they face a moving target. Around 10 years ago, the ‘centre ground’ of the battle comprised patients with around 10 kg to lose; today, it is 20 kg. This has profound implications for weight management and a range of related conditions, but recent research is highlighting new solutions for this group of patients.
For years dieters have been trying to avoid fat, and low-fat products have been promoted as the healthier option. But there is now a great deal of publicity around sugar and its toxic effects on our health, including claims that it is the ‘new tobacco’. The sweet white stuff is being blamed for the obesity epidemic and with it diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. So what is the evidence behind the hype, and what should we as health professionals be advising patients?
More people than ever are making trips overseas. Many of us have long-term conditions that we manage with lifestyle choices and medication or medical devices. You may have high blood pressure, angina, a previous heart attack, heart failure or another heart condition. This leaflet will help remind you of some of the advice given to you in a pre-travel consultation with your practice nurse or travel nurse.
There are many fads about specific foods and their ‘super’ vitamins and minerals. Our choice of foods has also widened as supermarkets expand their ranges and previously specialist foods become mainstream. However, even though we can now buy tamarillos, Christmas-cake cheese or cranberry and pecan bread, the principle of proportion remains consistent. So the Eatwell Plate is very helpful in showing patients exactly what we mean when we advise them to follow a ‘healthy, balanced diet’.
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