British Heart Foundation
More than 270,000 heart attacks occur each year, and of these patients, about 43% die within 28 days of their heart attack.
Of these deaths, about 75% occur within 24 hours. The outcome for many patients can also mean long-term cardiac illness - about 1.5 million people in the UK have angina and 760,000 people have heart failure.
This gives some idea of the enormity of the task facing those health professionals involved in cardiac care.
There has been exciting progress made in cardiac care, although many areas need urgent attention to allow initiatives to develop and deliver a uniform service across the country.
There is a need for more specialist nurse-led services for heart failure, primary and secondary prevention and cardiac rehabilitation, and more consistent access to services within many areas to bridge the gap between rich and poor.
The BHF aims to help health professionals meet these demands on their services by:
- Offering a wide range of literature for patients, but also by offering specialist information in the form of Factfiles on relevant treatments or heart conditions. Also some BHF videos are directed specifically at health professionals to help guide their patients' recovery.
- Providing financial support for research or educational projects, and for educational conferences or study days.
- Funding equipment for health professionals such as defibrillators, ECG monitors, or echocardiography machines, and offers training for technicians in echocardiography.
- Offering funding for equipment for those specializing in resuscitation to set up Heartstart training schemes in Emergency Life Support within the community, and particularly in schools.
- Offering grants for cardiac rehabilitation programmes that help health professionals enhance the services already in place or to develop new rehabilitation services.
- Funding has been provided for 44 BHF nurses to enhance the links between hospital and community by visiting patients and practices soon after the patient's discharge after a myocardial infarction or heart surgery. In 2002, 15 BHF heart failure nurses were funded by the BHF to carry out a similar role as a pilot project in this demanding field.
- Funding was originally provided for HeartSave, a primary Care course for Health Professionals. For further information about HeartSave please contact Sue Weston (Project Development Officer) on 01865 226975 or e-mail heartsave@dphpc.ox.ac.uk.
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