The Cardiovascular Network is required to give half of its time to prevention. To discuss this challenge, it had its first face-to-face meeting this month since the arrival of Covid-19.
Dr Shahed Ahmad, national director of cardiovascular disease prevention, and Dr Manisha Kumar, chief medical director for NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board, urged us to embrace this new emphasis on prevention.
The clinicians recognise the need to continue their great collaboration in many areas of clinical work, including heart failure, heart valve disease, acute coronary syndrome and stable chest pain, while paying more attention to prevention.
There is plenty of potential including improving rates of detection of hypertension, further adoption of the CURE programme to reduce smoking and increasing physical activity partly through cardiac rehabilitation.
Dr Farzin Fath-Ordoubadi, the Network’s clinical lead, said “Over the last 12 months, the SCN Cardiac Network has been expanding to help deliver the national and GM priorities for cardiac including the targets for the Long Term Plan and GIRFT recommendations.
“At this forum, the associates update each other with their pathway group projects and drive the network policies and workstreams. This key leadership forum is the engine of the SCN Cardiac Network championing and driving the agenda to improve the quality of care and patient outcome.
“It was great to see the team face-to-face and discuss our future plans.”
The Network's new clinical lead for prevention, Dr Aseem Mishra (pictured above left), produced a video of his presentation to the meeting, called 'Doing more with less (the P-word)', after the packed agenda meant they ran out of time to hear it. Watch it here.
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The cardiovascular team has launched a new diagnostics project, which will be integrated within all pathways in GM cardiac work.
Dr Keith Pearce, lead consultant cardiac scientist, has been appointed as the new clinical workstream lead for cardiac diagnostics. The inaugural meeting was held at the end of April and planning for the future has begun.
The network continues to grow and develop following the merger between the stroke and neurorehabilitation networks in October 2021.
New project management roles have been appointed in the form of facilitators, all of whom have clinical backgrounds spanning a range of professions.
Clinical leadership has been strengthened to ensure there is expertise across the care pathways, with recent appointments for psychology and CVD prevention.
Dr Janice MacKenzie (pictured above) is a consultant clinical psychologist with the Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust and will start in July to help lead this programme of work.
As mentioned in the last newsletter, the network has also jointly appointed, with the SCN’s cardiac programme, GP Dr Aseem Mishra, who will support both teams in developing a strategy and projects that tie in with regional/national system plans for this importance area.
The team is in very much in the “forming” phase of development but are now sufficiently resourced to take forward an ambitious programme of projects.
You can find out more here and follow the network on Twitter @GMNISDN.
The Network will soon be launching a new campaign to promote the pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) programme in GM.
Working with PR teams across GM, the project will aim to increase the number of patients taking part in the programme, reduce inappropriate referrals and address health inequalities.
The Network formed the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Collaborative in 2021 to increase improvement in the provision of structured education and exercise.
It is made up of PR teams from all 10 GM localities and the group is contributing towards the development of the campaign.
One of the initiatives being worked on is the rebranding of PR. The objectives include increasing the number of patients who take part in the programme, reducing inappropriate referrals and addressing health inequalities. There is now a new name for the programme, ‘Keep active, breathe better’, and a design company called C21 will deliver a video, website, leaflet and social media promotion.
Patients and health professionals have been recruited for the video, who will promote the benefits of PR and improve information and reassurance about services for patients.
The video will be shot at different locations with human interest storylines around the theme of “moments that matter”. The website will host the video and provide PR information with a specific page for health professionals advising on appropriate referral and patient pages explaining what PR is and detailing services available.
The accessible website will be available in 70 languages and the social media promotion to GPs/referrers will include a new easily recognisable logo which will appear on all communication channels to unite GM services.
The video, website and social media promotion is expected to be ready for the end of July and will be followed by a launch event later in the summer.
The Respiratory Network leads on initiatives which are designed to keep clinicians and other health professionals informed on how they can care for patients with long Covid.
A monthly email keeps clinicians and other professionals up-to-date on long Covid news and developments in GM, with the aim of supporting patients who are living with the effects of the condition.
If you would like to join our mailing list, please email alex.pegg1@nhs.net
The GM Covid-19 Recovery Peer Support Group meets online at 6pm on Wednesdays.
The group brings people together with shared experiences to support each other and helps inform health and social care services about what support and services are needed for people living with the long term effects of Covid.
For further information and joining details, please click here.
Our Children and Young People Network joined clinicians across GM to help mark World Asthma Day 2022.
The annual day is organised by Global Initiative for Asthma, a World Health Organisation collaborative, to raise awareness of the condition worldwide, and the team posted social media to raise awareness of self-management and work being carried out in the region.
The theme for this year was 'Closing Gaps in Asthma Care'.
The Network thanks children’s community nursing teams and asthma specialist nurses in Greater Manchester who held education awareness sessions for staff, children and young people and families in local community centres, libraries, hospitals and schools and also held a live session on Facebook. They also want to say a massive thank you to six of their GP children and young people clinical leads across GM, and their clinical lead Dr Wan-Ley Yeung, who volunteered and took part in a short video.
As well as Dr Yeung, the other participants were Dr Connie Chen (Manchester), Dr Helen Wall (Bolton), Dr Jayne Davies (Wigan), Dr Christine Ahmed (Tameside) and Dr Deborah Pole (Trafford).
The clinical advisor for asthma, Dr Kalpesh Dixit, also produced a video for social media.
Throughout the day, content was shared across the SCNs’ Twitter account and Facebook page to raise awareness of the events taking place, and post pictures and information of the work that is being undertaken. There were thousands of interactions with the posts.
Colleagues across GM also undertook some fantastic work in their localities to raise the profile of asthma for children and young people and their families. If you would like to see social media relating to the day, please search the following hashtags #WorldAstmaDay2022 and #WorldAsthmaDayGM.
Pictured above: photos from social media on World Asthma Day 2022.
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