Community Heart Failure Specialist Nurse Team

Heart Failure education - 23rd March 2012

Hot off the press: 24.10.11

Report from the May 2011 Patient Satisfaction Survey

  • The Heart Failure Specialist Nursing Team have conducted a patient satisfaction survey on their service seeking the views of 57 patients from their overall caseload.
  • A massive 46% returned their responses with the majority reporting some very positive feedback.
  • This report summarises these outcomes and actions the Nurses plan to take for continued improvement to the service they offer.
  • Click here to download the report: hfsurvey.pdf

Congratulations to the Community Heart Failure Nursing Team as the 'Runners Up' in the British Society for Heart Failure's 'European Heart Failure Awareness Day'

The Team entered the BSH competition for their excellent Health Awareness Event for the general public which took place at Hackney Library entitled 'Get to the Heart of the Matter'

PCT LES for Heart Failure

A PCT LES exists to fund you to identify patients with HF and to support the establishment of a specialist nursing team to support practices.

  • ELIC has supported the Willing Provider Practice hosting this service (Lower Clapton Group Practice) to employ 3 Specialist Heart Failure Nurses and an HCA to help you deliver this LES and help with case management of patients with severe problems.
  • The current version of the PCT's Heart Failure LES Specification and the current READ Code list are the same for 10/11 as they were for 09/10.

Ordering an Open Access Echo at Homerton:

  • One of the criteria for referral of a patient to the Community Heart Failure Specialist Nursing Team is a 'diagnosis confirmed by ECHO' that the patient has heart failure.
  • Should you need to take this as a first step, please download the OPEN ACCESS ECHO (HOMERTON) request form here:(basic WORD version only)Open Access Echo Request form.doc
  • NB: Please note the new FAX number (020 8510 7687) to which these forms need to be sent

Referral form:

We are pleased to provide a referral form for the Heart Failure Nursing Service.

NEWS UPDATE! We now have a full complement of Specialist Heart Failure Nurses as well as an HCA to support them in post. Following the Heart Failure Education sessions there has been a lot of interest from practices in the support these new roles offer. So if you are interested in running joint Heart Failure Clinics at your practice with the support of one of the new Nurses, make sure you let ELIC know as soon as possible as demand for their time is high!

Contact details for the Nurses:

Here are the nurses individual contact details and the Consortia to which they are each assigned:

  • Office phone: 0208 919 5002 / NB: additional new number:0207 683 4698
  • Office Fax: 0208 525 5500
  • Rosy Scott: 07590 047739 Rosemary.Scott1@nhs.net(for North Hackney / Rainbow Consortia)
  • Ellen Shata: 07590 047738 ellen.shata@nhs.net(for Sunshine / South West Consortia)
  • Zhareen Flordeliza: 07590 223874 z.flordeliza@nhs.net (for Well Consortia)

We are pleased to welcome a new heart failure specialist nurse to the team. Faye Cannam joined the team in January and will be covering the KLEAR consortium.

Her contact details are: 07718 192400 faye.cannam@nhs.net

If you have any queries regarding the service, please contact the Heart Failure Nurses Office directly or Dr Selvarajah Selvaseelan (CCG GP Lead for Cardiology) based at Stamford Hill Group Practice Tel: 0208 800 1000.

Heart Failure Community Rehabilitation Programme

Specific heart failure rehabilitation and exercise groups for heart failure patients are high on the agenda with both NICE and local networks. In April 2011 the community heart failure team ran a pilot study to see if it was feasible to offer heart failure rehabilitation alongside clients with respiratory conditions in the already well-established community pulmonary rehabilitation group. The hypothesis was that as the two groups of patients share a similar symptom burden; fatigue, shortness of breath, fluctuating energy levels and the risk of exacerbations as well as similar difficulties associated with living with a long term condition that they would report similar improvements to their breathlessness, exercise tolerance and quality of life.

A small group of patients (10) followed the same programme as the pulmonary rehabilitation clients at the Brittania leisure centre and participated in an educational component which was adapted to include advice and information and discussion time for specific heart failure issues such as medication, exacerbations and information about heart failure.

The programme was a resounding success with 9/10 patients showing statistically significant improvements to functional status as measured by the 6 minute walk test and 10/10 patients reporting improvements to quality of life measured by HADS and the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure questionnaire. The programme and the results will be presented to you at the GP forum in the New Year. Following this, we are now running this programme regularly.

With the community physiotherapy team we have developed a comprehensive pathway which shows all the routes for patients to access the different exercise options available, including home exercise, and this will also be presented at the forum.

However as the community physiotherapy team are now under the management of the Homerton this service will be under review. We hope very much that our data will show the need for this service to continue and we will count on your support to refer appropriate patients to the service in future.