All posts by ackersch

The government is committed to giving you greater choice over how you receive your NHS health care. A new NHS guide sets out some of the options available to you. It explains:

• when you have choices about your health care

• where to get more information to help you choose

• how to complain if you are not offered a choice.

In some situations you have legal rights to choice: in other circumstances you do not have a legal right, but you should be offered choices about your care, depending on what is available locally.

To find out what the options are, follow the links:

• My NHS care: what choices are available to me?

• Choosing your GP and GP practice

• Choosing where to go for your first appointment as an outpatient

• Asking to change hospital if you have to wait longer than the maximum waiting time

• Choosing who carries out a specialist test

• Choosing maternity services

• Choosing services provided in the community

• Choosing to have a personal health budget

With half term out of the way and the summer holidays looming you might be looking for travel advice? Your pharmacy can provide those essentials like sun tan lotion, wipes and plasters to cope with any minor disasters.

Your pharmacist should also be able to advise you on antimalarial medication, and any vaccinations you might need (and may even be able to administer them for you if they provide a travel clinic service).

If you can’t get to your local pharmacy for any reason, there are some good sites you can visit online:

• Nathnac.net is a site commissioned by Public Health England and contains the latest travel advice for UK travellers.

• www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk is the NHS Scotland travel site for people travelling abroad from the UK.

• NHS Choices also offers a variety of advice – stick ‘travel’ in the search box to see the options.

• Fitfortravel.nhs.uk

• wwnc.cdc.gov/travel is a US site, but that doesn’t stop it having some useful information – just be aware that UK guidance may differ in some respects.

With half term out of the way and the summer holidays looming you might be looking for travel advice? Your pharmacy can provide those essentials like sun tan lotion, wipes and plasters to cope with any minor disasters.

Your pharmacist should also be able to advise you on antimalarial medication, and any vaccinations you might need (and may even be able to administer them for you if they provide a travel clinic service).

If you can’t get to your local pharmacy for any reason, there are some good sites you can visit online:

• Nathnac.net is a site commissioned by Public Health England and contains the latest travel advice for UK travellers.

• www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk is the NHS Scotland travel site for people travelling abroad from the UK.

• NHS Choices also offers a variety of advice – stick ‘travel’ in the search box to see the options.

• Fitfortravel.nhs.uk

• wwnc.cdc.gov/travel is a US site, but that doesn’t stop it having some useful information – just be aware that UK guidance may differ in some respects.

Health and wellbeing begins between the ears
That’s the slogan for Men’s Health Week, which runs from 15th-21st June. This year it focuses on how you can beat stress.

Too much stress can damage your immune system and heart, and increase your chances of serious health problems. Stress can also cause mental health problems which, if unchecked, can also be serious. About three quarters of the people treated for depression are women, but about three quarters of the people who commit suicide are men.

A relentless build-up of pressure, without the opportunity to recover, can lead to harmful stress. The important thing is to recognise the warning signs and do something about it. Common signs are:

• Eating more or less than normal
• Mood swings
• Low self-esteem
• Feeling tense or anxious
• Not sleeping properly
• Feeling tired and lacking in energy
• Withdrawing from family and friends

You can find out more about how to beat stress at the Men’s Health Forum – www.menshealthforum.org.uk

The NHS Bowel Cancer Screening programme offers screening every two years to all men and women aged 60-74 (or 50-74 in Scotland) who are registered with a GP. If you are eligible you will automatically receive a test kit in the post with instructions.

The screening is for healthy people with no apparent signs of the disease. The test actually looks for traces of blood in your poo, which could be an early sign of cancer. So a positive doesn’t mean you definitely have cancer.

If bowel cancer is diagnosed at an early stage there is a good chance it can be successfully treated. The statistics show that 9 out of ten people survive their cancer for five years or more if it is diagnosed early.

Collecting a sample of your poo might not be your idea of good fun, and it is your choice whether to take part in the programme, but might just nip something rather unpleasant in the bud.

You can find out more about bowel screening on the Cancer Research website at cruk.org/bowelscreening

It might not be the time of year you want to think about getting a flu jab, but the NHS’ plans are well advanced for this winter’s immunisation programme.

For residents in England, the good news is that once again you will be able to get a flu jab at your local pharmacy – no appointment necessary!

The national flu immunisation programme is being extended to children in a phased roll-out. As well as all two to four year olds, in 2016-17 the vaccine will additionally be offered to all children of school year 3 age. Children of school years 1 and 2 age will remain eligible.

The NHS hopes that the children’s programme, once fully implemented, will avert many cases of severe flu and flu-related deaths in older adults and others in ‘at risk’ groups.

Provisional data show that in 2015/16 the vaccine was well matched to the circulating strains of flu. Throughout the past decade, there has generally been a good match between the strains of flu in the vaccine and those that subsequently circulated.

Flu vaccination remains the best way to protect people from flu. Remember that come the autumn.

There is currently no cure for osteoarthritis. However, there are some things you can do to help manage the disease and improve your symptoms.

One of the most important is to keep a healthy body weight, mainly for protection of your knee joints. Being overweight is a major risk factor for knee osteoarthritis. It increases the risk of OA developing and makes the symptoms worse.

OA happens when cartilage, the tissue that covers the ends of bones where they form a joint, breaks down. There are two main ways for OA to develop. The first is through forces acting upon the joints. The second path is through an increase in inflammation, which leads to an increase in pain. Fat creates and releases chemicals within the body that promote inflammation.

Body weight directly influences both pathways. Being overweight not only increases the load placed on the knee joints which can help to speed up the breakdown of cartilage, it also makes the condition worse.

You, the people of England are visiting your GP more often and are having longer consultations than you were in 2007, according to a study in The Lancet.

The study warns the increases are unsustainable, and that general practice in England could be reaching saturation point. So making your local pharmacy your first point of call could be even more practical and sensible than ever!

The pressures have not been eased by the fact that recruitment of new GPs and nurses remains low while the population steadily increases.

The study was based on an analysis of more than 100 million GP and nurse consultations at 398 general practices in England between 2007 and 2014 – equivalent to 4.5 per cent of all GP practices in England.

Between 2007 and 2014, the average number of annual consultations (face-to-face, telephone and home visits) per patient rose by 13.67% for doctors and 2.76% for nurses. Average consultation times also increased by 5% from 8.45 minutes in 2007 to 8.86 minutes in 2014.

Cardiac risk calculators are frequently used to predict the chances of people having heart disease.

Population statistics are used to work out the most important risk factors for cardiovascular disease, things like being overweight or smoking. This information gives doctors a good idea of what your heart attack risk is, based on your lifestyle.

Reducing the risk of heart attacks and stroke for people as they get older can be helped by changing individual factors. Age is one risk factor that cannot be modified, but others such as cholesterol and blood pressure can be.
Using these early predictions for a raised risk of a major heart event within 10 years is a guide for lifestyle changes and medication that can bring the predicted risk down. If you are at higher than average risk of heart problems you may find your GP prescribes you statins or blood pressure drugs, for example.

Ask one of our pharmacists if you want more information about cardiac risk calculators.

Have you noticed you have been sniffing and sneezing a bit over the past few weeks? Runny nose? Eyes a bit itchy? You may be suffering from hayfever brought on by tree pollen, the first pollen type to peak during the year.

Many hay fever sufferers jump into their cars poorly prepared for their journey. Your local pharmacy can help you reduce the dangers of driving by taking proper precautions.
Choosing the right anti-histamine is highly important as some older, yet popular, brands can make you drowsy. Ask your pharmacist for long acting, non-sedating antihistamine.

Treat watery eyes before driving You need to be able to see where you are going so use anti-allergy eye drops before getting behind the wheel. Again, ask one of our pharmacists for an appropriate product.

Keep tissues handy. A sudden sneeze or a continuous running nose can be annoying and easily distract a driver. So don’t forget to pick up a pack of tissues to keep in the car.