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Berwick Area Heart Support Group September 2008 newsletter
Berwick Heart Support Group next meeting starts the autumn season with a key note monthly meeting, Wednesday September 3rd, 7.0pm, Day Hospital, Berwick Infirmary. NHS Dietician Ann Geddes will introduce advice on healthy eating and a talk by Joan Braund followed by discussion. We hope to welcome a wide audience. Last months meeting was cancelled due to the inclement weather.
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Blood Pressure Tests & Teamwork
Berwick Heart Support Group has always been interested in prevention as well as treatment. We have learned how to modify risk factors. Recently on behalf of the group we initiated a project with General Mills ('Jus-Rol') Berwick and their 400 staff. We had the contact anyway because of the support received from the company (e.g. they provide paper for the Newsletter) and donations from staff over several years. Blood pressure testing has been singled out as the next public health target following on from smoking cessation. Some of you will remember a talk by Dr Mike Lavender a couple of years ago that spelled this out.
Terry contacted Paula McKenna, Human Relations manager at GM and then Jean Baird, the NHS Health Improvement manager at the Northumberland Care Trust in Ashington who was in at the founding of our Group seven years ago. Jean provided the link between us and Margaret Lewicki (Health Improvement Development) and the Health Trainers in the south of the county. Margaret recruited the services of two health trainers, Lesley Elcock and Julie Brown, who made the journey north to Berwick in July. Margaret reports that Health Trainers saw a good turnout for the event with almost 60 people attending for BP’s. The facilities were fine. Telephone support was offered to those with high readings and health information has been sent up to individuals. They would be pleased to do a follow up in October if required.
Sounds great to us. Marjory, Terry and I had spent best part of a day at Jus - Rol a few days before the Health Trainers. We were in the canteen dishing out leaflets explaining about blood pressure These had been provided by Chris Storey also from the Health Improvement team via a timely drop-off by the regular van at the Tweedmouth Clinic. We had great chats with many of the GM staff, including the Canteen Manager who takes feeding the staff very seriously and is knowledgeable about healthy eating. We hope to see her at our September 3rd meeting when we will meet the NHS dieticians again.
Thanks again to all who took part and to GM and Paula McKenna who co-ordinated timing and venues.
We are providing a brief report in the Health Improvement Teams' e-update Newsletter and also a copy of this our Newsletter will be on our BAHSG's very popular website that Terry created and maintains.
Spread the word about good teamwork!
Phil..
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Wally’s Yarn
A Berwick senior citizen drove his brand new ‘BMW convertible’ out of the car salesroom. Taking off down the motorway, he floored it to 30mph, enjoying the wind blowing through what little hair he had left. 'Amazing!' he thought as he flew down the Berwick bypass, enjoying pushing the pedal to the metal even more. Looking in his rear view mirror, he saw a police car behind him, blue lights flashing and siren blaring.'I can get away from him - no problem!' thought the elderly nutcase as he floored it to 40mph, then 50, then 66mph.Suddenly, he thought, 'What on earth am I doing? I'm too old for this nonsense!' So he pulled over to the side of the road and waited for the police car to catch up with him.
Pulling in behind him, the police officer walked up to the driver's side of the BMW, looked at his watch and said, 'Sir, my shift ends in 10 minutes. Today is Friday and I'm taking off for the weekend. If you can give me a reason that I've never heard before why you were speeding, I'll let you go.'
The man looked very seriously at the policeman, and replied, 'Years ago, my wife ran off with a policeman. I thought you were bringing her back.'
'Have a good day, Sir,' said the policeman.
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