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00:00 Hello, my name is Chloe. I'm one of the cardiac nurses and I work on the British Heart Foundation's
00:04 Heart Helpline. I've been a cardiac nurse for about a decade now and most of my background is
00:10 in acute care, so that's intensive care, high dependency units, but I've also got a lot of
00:16 experience on the wards with surgical and cardiology patients. The Heart Helpline is a
00:21 source of support for anyone who's living with or perhaps affected by heart and circulatory disease,
00:26 so that can be the patient themselves or perhaps one of their loved ones. So people tend to call
00:31 us about, you know, things like have they had a diagnosis and they want to understand it a little
00:36 bit better, have they been prescribed some medication and they want to know how it works,
00:40 or perhaps they want to know about recovery and or how a procedure might go for them. We can't be
00:45 specific with our clinical advice just because we're not looking after anybody, but we can still
00:49 give lots of information and support. Some of the common questions that people ask us on the
00:53 Helpline are mostly to do with conditions, so they might call about AF or heart valve disease or heart
00:59 failure and it's usually because they want to understand a bit more about their diagnosis.
01:03 They also ask us some practical stuff as well, like whether or not they can drive or whether
01:08 they can travel or they've got questions about medication and we can give them as much information
01:14 as we can, but quite often we do have to signpost out to specialists or their doctor or to a
01:19 specialist organisation like the DVLA for example. When somebody calls the Heart Helpline they'll be
01:23 greeted by one of the cardiac nurses. It's a completely confidential phone line so you don't
01:29 have to give your name if you don't want to. You don't need any NHS details either, you can just
01:34 talk to us and it's a very casual space, you can ask us anything and we'll do our best to give you
01:39 as much information as we can or signpost you to someone if we don't have that exact answer.
01:44 If you know someone who's got questions about heart and circulatory disease, perhaps they're
01:48 living with a condition or they know someone who does, then you can signpost them to our webpage
01:52 and you can see all the ways you can get in touch with us.
01:54 [Music]