Making Best Practice, Every Day Practice
The ‘Year of Care’ is a systematic approach to managing long-term conditions, focused on personalised care planning where patients work with the clinician to agree goals, identify support needs, develop and implement action plans, and monitor progress. This article reports the learning from implementing ‘Year of Care’ in primary care practices in Leeds.
This month’s Back to Basics feature is a wallchart showing the new government Eatwell Guide to help your patients understand how to eat a healthy and balanced diet. You may also be interested in visiting the Eatwell page on the NHS Choices website. This includes useful healthy eating tools such as a calorie checker and BMI calculator.
This month’s Back to Basics feature is a free wallchart to aid interpretation of the NHS Health Check results. Use this information with last month’s Back to Basics NHS Health Check chart to raise your patients’ awareness of cardiovascular risk factors and to determine the best lifestyle and medical approaches for each individual.
Despite good evidence that physical activity is effective in preventing health complications, less than half of adults meet the minimum recommendations for physical activity. This article reviews the use and value of high-intensity interval exercise (short bursts of exercise) in different groups to reduce the risk of long-term conditions.
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.
Recent guidelines recommend two key steps to reduce ischaemic stroke in people with atrial fibrillation: 1. Improving the assessment of stroke risk and 2. Increasing the use of evidence-based anticoagulant therapy. In this article, leading specialists explain how to apply current guidelines to improve current practice in stroke prevention.
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.
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.
The NHS Health Check offers 15 million people aged 40-74 years in England an assessment of cardiovascular risk, together with preventive interventions, once every five years. The programme has aroused some controversy, but there is an urgent need to take action now to reduce preventable, premature death and disability caused by vascular disease.
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