The British Heart Foundation's Heart Helpline

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Transcript

00:00 Hello, my name is Chloe. I'm one of the cardiac nurses and I work on the British Heart Foundation's

00:04 Heart Helpline. I've been a cardiac nurse for about a decade now and most of my background is

00:10 in acute care, so that's intensive care, high dependency units, but I've also got a lot of

00:16 experience on the wards with surgical and cardiology patients. The Heart Helpline is a

00:21 source of support for anyone who's living with or perhaps affected by heart and circulatory disease,

00:26 so that can be the patient themselves or perhaps one of their loved ones. So people tend to call

00:31 us about, you know, things like have they had a diagnosis and they want to understand it a little

00:36 bit better, have they been prescribed some medication and they want to know how it works,

00:40 or perhaps they want to know about recovery and or how a procedure might go for them. We can't be

00:45 specific with our clinical advice just because we're not looking after anybody, but we can still

00:49 give lots of information and support. Some of the common questions that people ask us on the

00:53 Helpline are mostly to do with conditions, so they might call about AF or heart valve disease or heart

00:59 failure and it's usually because they want to understand a bit more about their diagnosis.

01:03 They also ask us some practical stuff as well, like whether or not they can drive or whether

01:08 they can travel or they've got questions about medication and we can give them as much information

01:14 as we can, but quite often we do have to signpost out to specialists or their doctor or to a

01:19 specialist organisation like the DVLA for example. When somebody calls the Heart Helpline they'll be

01:23 greeted by one of the cardiac nurses. It's a completely confidential phone line so you don't

01:29 have to give your name if you don't want to. You don't need any NHS details either, you can just

01:34 talk to us and it's a very casual space, you can ask us anything and we'll do our best to give you

01:39 as much information as we can or signpost you to someone if we don't have that exact answer.

01:44 If you know someone who's got questions about heart and circulatory disease, perhaps they're

01:48 living with a condition or they know someone who does, then you can signpost them to our webpage

01:52 and you can see all the ways you can get in touch with us.

01:54 [Music]