Tessa, age 68, rarely attends the surgery. She arrives on a Monday morning, however, saying that she had a ‘funny turn’ over the weekend. “I couldn’t think straight and my words came out all wrong. My arm was tingling like no-one’s business so I took to my bed to sleep it off. I still feel a bit queer this morning so Pete said I should pop down and get checked over.” What could be the problem with Tessa and what should you do?
Editorial
“A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle,” to quote the Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran. Well, that’s what the British Journal of Primary Care Nursing (BJPCN) is all about – putting knowledge into action. And it sums up what primary care nurses do too. We are not people who sit about debating what to do, we get on and do it.
You and your treatment: starting on your statin
Inhaled insulin: a breath of fresh air in diabetes
Mending hearts and brains: the clinical case for change
Over my lifetime, treatment for heart disease has improved beyond recognition. For the last six years, I have had the privilege of leading a programme that has accelerated that change, reducing waiting times, bringing in new treatments, training more specialists, and ensuring patients have more and better choices available. I am now working to repeat those strides forward for stroke, the brain’s equivalent of heart attack. There are a similar number of strokes to heart attacks, but this equally devastating condition has been slower to catch the medical and public imagination in this country. With our ageing population, it represents a growing challenge for the future.
How to Get Top Marks for Identifying and Managing Atrial Fibrillation
Editorial
Well, spring has sprung! The first few months of each year are a good time to look forward to the challenges ahead. This can be rather daunting, but the bright flowers of spring give us glimpses of hope. In the same way, we hope that this issue of BJPCN can – like a bunch of daffodils – brighten up your day-to-day work in coping with the “warp speed” of change in the NHS.
The Keys to Optimising Lipid Management
Primary healthcare professionals have been set a series of challenges and dilemmas for the management of lipids in the updated Joint British Societies’ (JBS) guidelines for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (JBS2). In this article, we review the changes in emphasis of the new guidelines – teasing out how they can help to further reduce our patients’ risk of cardiovascular disease with tougher cholesterol targets than ever before, together with practical advice on how to achieve these targets.
Oily Fish and Omega-3 Fats – Making Sense of the Latest Evidence
Preventing the Progression of Pre-Diabetes
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Linking Thoughts to Actions
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a combination of two types of therapy: cognitive (how we think about things) and behavioural (what we do). NICE guidelines recommend CBT as a frontline therapy for depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. The National Institute of Mental Health suggests that a combination of CBT and medication may be the best treatment for many patients with panic disorder. As CBT is moving higher up the therapy agenda, this article takes you through what it is and what it involves in practice.
