Heart nurses
- There are 191 BHF Heart Nurses caring for patients across the UK.
- 2.6 million people are living with heart disease in the UK.
- A donation of £24 would fund a BHF Heart Nurse for an hour.
BHF Heart Nurses
BHF Heart Nurses improve the quality of life for thousands of heart patients across the UK. Our vision is for every patient suffering from heart disease to have access to the expert care of a BHF Heart Nurse. The success of the 2005 Valentine Appeal, our major campaign to raise funds for BHF Heart Nurses, and continued support from the Big Lottery Fund, contributed to realising that goal.
Action
BHF Heart Nurses make a real difference to the lives of heart patients and their families. They provide support, information and care for them by monitoring and explaining their condition and offering advice on lifestyle, nutrition and medication. This helps to stabilise patients’ conditions and often prevents readmissions to hospital. BHF Heart Nurses empower patients and families to optimise their quality of life and to learn to live with their cardiac disease.
The number of BHF Heart Nurses is growing steadily:
- The Big Lottery Fund award from 2004 continues to support 76 Heart
Failure Nurses. - Over £1 million was raised by our generous supporters during the
Valentine Appeal, which is helping us to fund around 30 new BHF Heart
Nurses. - We are piloting an innovative project funding five new specialist nurses to
care for grown-ups with congenital heart disease. - Another 56 Heart Failure Nurses and three Paediatric Cardiac Liaison
Nurses have been added to the BHF Heart Nurses team and we are also
supporting an additional 29 adopted Heart Failure Nurses.
“It would be impossible to improve the quality of care that our father received from the BHF. Our Nurse (Amanda Moss) was exemplary in her care of Dad in both a practical and emotional sense. She also supported all the family when things got bad and was at the end of a telephone whenever we needed her.”
Mrs Dowle, Stoke-on-Trent
Other developments include working in partnership with Marie Curie Cancer Care to develop better planning, choice and coordination of palliative care to heart patients, and piloting new training programmes for BHF Heart Nurses.
Impact
The effect of funding more BHF Heart Nurses is clear. Their unique training helps to prevent further heart problems and reduce hospital admissions. Independent research has shown that heart patients have a better quality of life with specialist nursing care.
BHF Heart Nurses see around 30 patients a week, so every new nurse we can support makes a real difference. It is estimated that in the region of 50,000 patients benefited from their expertise and care in 2005/06.
Next steps
More than two and a half million of us are living with heart disease in the UK today and the need for BHF Heart Nurses remains significant.
We aim for 60 more BHF Heart Nurses to be helping patients across the UK by autumn 2006.
As new discoveries and treatments help more and more people survive heart attacks, we are going to need your continued help and support both now and in the future.
Adopted BHF Heart Nurse - nurses who receive support and training from the charity but their salaries are paid for by their NHS trust.