Pumping Marvellous

Heart Skips a beat with the new Pumping Marvellous Toolkit

The BHF have got staying alive and now Pumping Marvellous have got “heart skips a beat” by Olly Murs. We would like to thank everybody for their hardwork and dedication in making this video such a success and we really hope it energises people who have been newly diagnosed with heart failure to have some attitude, belief and success in managing their heart failure symptoms. Also remember this video is also good for carers / caregivers and families to learn about how to help.

This video accompanies the Patient Heart Failure toolkit that has been developed by Pumping Marvellous for the NHS in England and Wales to support self management.

Founder speaks to Heart Failure Conference 

Nick our Founder and heart failure patient himself was invited to speak at the North West Heart Failure Nurses Conference in front of 50 representatives from the NHS Northwest region on the 21/11/2012. He was asked to speak about self care in heart failure patients and the new patient system of self care that has been devised by the charity – “The Toolkit”. The Toolkit has been developed by patients, carers, clinicians, rehabilitation practitioners, charities and organisations who have a stake in heart failure. The Toolkit is written in patient speak so it is easy to understand and is not overly technical like the majority of literature that is given to patients.

The toolkit was funded by the NHS North West and is a pilot case that is currently running in the East Lancashire area. On the day we polled the heart failure clinicians on how they thought their patients would want to change the way they were cared for. We managed to get significant valuable feedback that we will be using in later versions.

We are always pleased to be given the opportunity to talk about how patients perceive and would want to change the way they interact with their own care as this is the way change is brought about.

Lancashire Telegraph – written by Catherine Pye

FUNDING has been secured for a new heart failure ‘tool kit’ for patients leaving the Royal Blackburn Hospital.

The Hapton-based charity Pumping Marvellous applied for £22,000 from NHS North West to produce 1,500 tool kits — parcels of information on how to live with the condition after discharge — and hope  to launch them at the end of September.

Nick Hartsthorne-Evans, 42, set up Pumping Marvellous after he suffered heart failure, aged 39, from picking up a virus.   He said: “Hospitals do their best to give leaflets that are clinically correct, but is that what the patient needs, to read about how morbid it is?

“What they give you satisfies your needs for about six months. It’s not a life-long thing.

“What we’re doing is based on the ‘bounty bag’ that new mums get after giving birth. It will give patients all the information they need throughout their lives on how to manage the condition. “There will be information in there for the employer, about smoking cessation and alcohol management, information for carers, and how make sure someone is getting benefits they’re entitled to.

“For the cost of each tool kit — about £15 — it will have a great impact on reducing hospital admissions and will make people less symptomatic

After an 18 month trial period, Nick hopes to be able to secure more funding to roll the scheme out regionally and then nationally.

If you know what a Bounty Pack is then visualise this as a concept if you don’t put Bounty Pack into Google and you will find out about it. Pumping Marvellous has developed a Heart Failure Toolkit which will help Heart Failure patients along with their carers and families to manage this long term condition.  It is a lifelong toolkit for self-management.

We would like to have your thoughts and have therefore put the project out for consultation. We would like you to tell us what you think should go into this toolkit, what you would expect to see in this toolkit if you were a newly diagnosed patient, a carer or member of the family.

All feedback and recommendations are well received and hopefully we can pull as comprehensive a pack together and make a real difference to patients and the way they manage their Heart Failure in the community.

1,000,000 people in the UK suffer from Heart Failure and over 6,000,000 in the US. You may know one and if you do give some thought to some feedback that could make a real difference.

Contact us via a Facebook post  or email hearts@pumpingmarvellous.org or friend us on twitter @pumpinghearts and send us a DM.

Thanks for considering this, the Trustees.