A new practical guide will help primary care teams overcome limitations created by COVID-19 and continue to deliver quality cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention services.
Since the pandemic, patients are likely to have had less contact with healthcare professionals, leading to lower detection rates for CVD risk factors such as hypertension and atrial fibrillation. Symptoms of stroke, TIA or heart attack may also have gone unreported. At the same time, primary care teams have had to rapidly shift to remote working.
The new guidance – produced in a collaboration between the Oxford Academic Health Science Network (Oxford AHSN) and the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme – is co-authored with the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society (PCCS) and aims to signpost primary care professionals to the right resources to address these and related issues. It has been put together by a wide-ranging team of national experts and includes experience from the NHS primary care frontline.