Healthy Lives
The pulmonary rehabilitation service, formerly run at Great Western Hospital, has been replaced by a new programme called Healthy Lives which combines rehabilitation for patients with both COPD and heart failure. The service is delivered by Leisure Services in partnership with NHS Swindon, for patients who have been newly diagnosed as having COPD or heart failure by a health professional. When a patient is referred they will be allocated a place on the next available course.
Healthy Lives takes place in a more informal community setting at the Haydon Centre, Haydon Wick and is delivered by specially qualified staff. Each course consists of 2 sessions per week (Tuesday and Thursday) for seven weeks and runs throughout the year. Each session includes 1 hour of gentle exercise which will be tailored to individuals’ requirements, followed by 1 hour of education relating to various aspects of self management.
The course is designed to encourage people to lead healthy lives when living with congestive obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and heart failure by delivering a combined COPD/heart failure rehabilitation service to acheive:
- Increase in exercise tolerance
- Improved quality of life and general well-being.
- Increase in activity levels as a result of increased confidence in ability
- Reduction in non-elective admissions for COPD/heart failure patients
- Improvement in assessment indicators for patients participating in the programme
- increased knowledge of their condition and how to manage it more effectively
For more information on the Healthy Lives Programme email Carole Jones or call her on 01793 864934.
Living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
Your doctor at the surgery or at the hospital will have told you that you have a condition involving chronic obstruction of the airways. We refer to this as COPD, but in the past many names have been used.
Here are the names you might have heard:
- Emphysema
- Chronic Bronchitis
- Severe Asthma
- Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease (COAD)
Others simply call it ‘smokers chest’ because most people with COPD have been smokers. COPD is a very common condition.
What is Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease?
It is helpful to go through each of the words and explain what they mean.
CHRONIC means long standing. It has nothing to do with how bad the disease is; it simply indicates that it is not a short-term illness
OBSTRUCTIVE means blocking or hindering. In COPD the airways are narrowed, so the air cannot flow freely. The narrowing is often most marked when breathing out. As the air is squeezed out through the narrowed tubes a wheeze may be heard.
PULMONARY refers to your lungs. It includes all the tubes that take air through you mouth and nose into your lungs.
DISEASE means illness. It simply tells us that not all is well.
All patients with chronic bronchitis or emphysema and some patients with long standing asthma have COPD. Some patients with COPD may have a mixture of these three conditions. However, the fact that these conditions all have chronic obstruction of the airways gives them a common denominator.
The symptoms of COPD may be intermittent, they may be much worse some days than others, or they may be bad all the time. COPD affects different people in different ways and the reason they have it may be different.