Our Cardiac Rehab team during Covid-19   You are here: Home » News Detail

A number of Your Healthcare services have adapted to the challenges faced by them during this Covid-19 pandemic to ensure they continue the treatment of service users and patients on their road to recovery. Our Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) team is currently using a virtual cardiac rehabilitation programme, called Activate Your Heart® (AYH), that enables them to continue to provide vital care to this particularly vulnerable group of people; these cardiac patients can now continue their rehabilitation safely from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, under the guidance of our CR team.To date 32 patients have registered onto the programme, with the team’s 1st patient completing their virtual cardiac rehab last week!

This web-based Activate Your Heart® (AYH) programme has been designed by cardiac rehabilitation specialists at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, and made freely available for a time-limited period, so that CR teams can continue to support patients virtually.

In addition to the AYH platform our CR team has also created 15 exercise videos on YouTube that they send to patients to use alongside AYH. After a telephone assessment, patients are sent the appropriate level video tailored to their individual need. The patient then does these exercises at home, liaising with their cardiac rehab professional on a weekly basis. Patients are also sent education materials to help them better understand and therefore manage, their cardiac condition. They’ll also receive resources with advice on supporting their psychological health. If a patient doesn’t have internet access our team will send a written exercise programme, accompanied by a home visit where possible, and follow up weekly by phone.

Ali Child, Lead Nurse, Community CVD Prevention and Rehabilitation Team: “Thanks to all of our team who are working tirelessly to continue to support cardiac patients during this time. This includes one of our team, Liz Visagie, who has spearheaded the work with AYH and also Lauren Walker who has created many different levels of exercise videos that we can send to patients for them to continue exercising in isolation”.