Supporting resources for primary care
Below you will find a list of resources designed to help those working within Primary Care. The hypertension guidance contains detailed information for GPs and health professionals in the area who are treating patients, under the age of 80, who have uncomplicated hypertension.
The hypertension clinical searches and treatment flow chart contains a summary of the three searches, a treatment guidance flowchart and how to access the searches.
- Healthy Hearts Guideline for Uncomplicated Hypertension please note these guidelines are currently being updated as part of the West Yorkshire hypertension task and finish group and will be published once approved through governance processes.
- Healthy Hearts hypertension clinical searches
Work happening across West Yorkshire
Work is happening across West Yorkshire, supporting core20plus5 for hypertension and lipids to support reducing health inequalities. Pilots and projects include outreach work in local communities, working with Voluntary, Community, Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector to ensure blood pressure checks are offered and the development of blood pressure champions. Link to NHS England » Core20PLUS5 (adults) – an approach to reducing healthcare inequalities.
One example locally was the CVD Community Champion Campaign in partnership with TSL Kirklees. The campaign aimed to:
- Improve awareness of all types of CVD
- Improve awareness of signs and symptoms of CVD
- Support people to “ know their numbers”
- Provide signposting support for CVD
- Gain important insights around barriers, key themes and learning
- Focus on all health inclusion groups
Through community-based conversations and activity they increased awareness, ofered advice and signposted individuals at groups, events and in other community settings and achieved some fantastic results:
- 1340 1-1 conversations took place across Kirklees
- 67 group visits took place to raise awareness reaching a further 669 people
- 461 Blood pressure readings taken by champions in the community
- 4 smaller community groups awarded funding to be a part of CVD community conversations” a further 222 people reached.
They also offered specialist subject matter training and ongoing support provided by Public Health. For more information on what they did, why and more on these outcomes please download the CVD Community Champion Campaign May - July 2024 leaflet.
May Measure Month 2025 + Saturday 17 May 2025 - Save the date and mark your calendars for World Hypertension Day 2025
The theme for this year is Know Your Numbers, we're aiming to encourage as many people as possible to get involved in May Measurement Month. Below you'll find a number of resources to share with colleagues and patients (also available on our patient information web page):
Common questions answered
- What is May Measure month: Dr Rupy Aujla answers in this video
- Who needs a BP check? All adults should have their BP checked.
- What is high blood pressure? If your blood pushes against your blood vessel walls with too much force, it puts a strain on your heart and blood vessels.
- Why is high blood pressure a problem? Over time it can lead to strokes, heart disease, kidney disease, vascular dementia, peripheral artery disease and erectile dysfunction.
- What should your blood pressure be? Ideally, we should all have a blood pressure reading between 90/60mmHg and 120/80mmHg
- What do the numbers mean? A blood pressure reading consists of two numbers: Systolic – The first number, which indicates pressure in the arteries when the heart beats. Diastolic – The second number, which indicates pressure in the arteries when the heart relaxes between beats. If the first number is 110 and the second number is 70, this would be written as 110/70. Blood pressure is measured in millimetres of mercury (mmHg) so the reading would be 110/70mmHg or may be referred to as 110 over 70. Dr Rupy Aujila explains further in this short video.
Links to useful websites to support patients
- May Measure Month: Official webiste
- World Hypertension League: World Hypertension Day
- Access May Measure Month resources, including resources to download in Emgliah, Arabic, Dutch, French, Greek, Hindi, Mandarin, Portugese, Sinhala, Spanish and Tamil.
- Learn about blood pressure using the British Heart Foundation Understanding Blood Pressure large print booklet, the Blood Pressure UK: Keep your blood pressure healthy easy read, the Bradford Talking Media Keep an eye on your blood pressure: An easy read guide and Blood Pressure UK: Keep you heart healthy easy read
- Learn about heart health using the British Heart Foundation accessible resources in Braille, Audio and other languages
- Learn about measuring blood pressure at home. Visit Blood Pressure UK for How to measure your Blood Pressure at Home, watch their How to measure your blood pressure video and review their Guidelines for home blood pressure testing.
- Keep a record. Download and share the Blood Pressure UK handy E-record card or use the British Hypertension Patient Diary to record your blood pressure numbers on.
- Understand what the numbers mean. Download and use the Blood Pressure UK blood pressure chart to see what the numbers mean.
- Check your results. Using the NHS Blood Pressure checking service Check your blood pressure reading - NHS (www.nhs.uk). The checking service will advise you what to do next.
- Find a community pharmacy for a blood pressure check on the find a pharmacy NHS web page (Find a pharmacy - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
- Find out top lifestyle tips to help improve or maintain a healthy BP on the May Measure Month website.
Useful promotional materials
- World Hypertension Day Poster image
- World Hypertension Day Poster PDF
- Free blood pressure check poster PDF
- Blood Pressure Poster PDF
Know your numbers week 2024
Know your numbers is an annual campaign led by Blood Pressure UK to raise awareness of high blood pressure. Each year we work together with our partners including NHS organisations, Local Authorities, VCSE, University of Huddersfield, Yorkshire Ambulance Service, service users and their unpaid carers to raise awareness of the importance of blood pressure checks to encourage everyone to know their numbers.
Making Every Contact Count (MECC)
The MECC elearning programme is designed to support learners to be comfortable having making every contact count conversations. These conversations can support people to make small changes that will help to reduce their blood pressure or reduce other risk factors such as smoking. The training can be access by clicking this link: MECC elearning.
CVD Prevent
CVDPREVENT is a national primary care audit that automatically extracts routinely held GP data covering diagnosis and management of six high risk conditions that cause stroke, heart attack and vascular dementia: atrial fibrillation (AF), high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, non-diabetic hyperglycaemia and chronic kidney disease. It provides a foundation for professionally led quality improvement in individual GP practices across Primary Care Networks (PCNs) and supports primary care in understanding how many patients with CVD and/or the high-risk conditions are potentially undiagnosed, or have more opportunity to optimise their treatment. The audit provides data to highlight gaps, identify inequalities, and opportunities for improvement. Visit the CVDPREVENT web pages via NHSE using this link.
Additional information and resources
Bradford Talking Media
NHS
- Finding cases of Hypertension in GDP practices – a pilot to support GMPs: There is a pilot within Yorkshire and Humber led by Chief Dental Officer for England (OCDO) where some dentists are taking part in detecting people who may have high blood pressure Click this link to open the OCDO GP Flyer.docx
- Dr Tarun Narula (CVD Prevention clinical lead for Yorkshire and Humber/GP at West Wakefield PCN)'s blog High blood pressure, what's the fuss: May 2023
- Hypertension treatment guidance
- Hypertension clinical searches and treatment flowchart
Blood Pressure UK (BPUK)
- Blood Pressure UK: Know you numbers resources
- Blood Pressure UK; Know you numbers
- Blood Pressure UK: Resources
British and Irish Hypertension Society
- British and Irish Hypertension Society: List of approved BP monitors
- British and Irish Hypertension Society: Resources
- British and Irish Hypertension Society: BIHS Guidelines
British Heart Foundation (BHF)
- British Heart Foundation: Information for professionals
- British Heart Foundation: Understanding tests for heart and circulatory conditions
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British Heart Foundation: Heart health information in your language - BHF
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
- NICE Guidance: Cardiovascular conditions: Hypertension. All NICE products on hypertension. Includes any guidance and quality standards.
- NICE guideline (NG136): Hypertension in adults: diagnosis and management
- NICE guideline (NG133): Hypertension in pregnancy: diagnosis and management