Cardiac Rehab

Hello I’m Sue and I’m the Cardiac Rehabilitation Lead at Bradford Teaching Hospitals.

Our Cardiac rehab programme is for patients who have had a heart attack, angioplasty or heart surgery.

It will provide you with the advice and guidance you need in the first 3 months following your treatment in hospital. I know from my experience of supporting a large number of patients that this is a critical period in your recovery.

Having good support to hand that reassures you about the right lifestyle, activity, diet and mental health is really important.

We will see you face to face in clinics, but by developing this digital tool to work alongside your appointments, we hope to ensure that you always have the information you need to recover well.

When you leave hospital, you will be assigned to the caseload of a specialist cardiac rehabilitation nurse. The role of the nurse is to provide support and education to you in the first weeks following your discharge.

We will tailor the programme to suit your needs with as many contacts with the team as is required on an individual basis. This will be done following your assessment appointment. They will be mainly run in clinic, but some will also be telephone.

Your appointments will be to assess your symptoms and to manage any changes to your treatment. They will also be to provide face to face education about your heart and recovery. Your nurse will invite you to attend one of our exercise programmes if appropriate. And do remember that if you need an interpreter for one of our appointments, one will be provided for you. There is more information on the site about how to do this.

A key part of our service is what we do online as well. We recognise that patients want to access information in different ways and at times that suit their lifestyles. So in this site for Cardiac Rehab we have organised all the information, support material and relevant links that we think you might need to aid your recovery.

You’ll hear first from one of my consultant colleagues who will explain the importance of good cardiac rehab. Then we have clustered together the information from our team of nurses, physios, dieticians and psychologists into these 4 topic areas:

1. Doing the right amount of exercise (Physio)
2. Support for your mental wellbeing (Psychologist)
3. Eating well to support recovery (Dietician)
4. Managing your medicines and treatments (Nurse specialist)

Click on the tabs for each to watch a video from one of our specialists and then access the guidance information, trusted web links and leaflet downloads we have put together for you in that section.

You will have access to this information for as long as you need it.

We realise you will have many questions and this site might not answer everything, so can always contact your nurse during the programme if you have any worries or concerns. Our contact details are displayed lower down.

If you require an interpreter for any of your calls, clinics or classes please let your cardiac rehab nurse know and she will arrange this for you.