Steps are being taken in Gloucestershire to offer better advice and support to patients with lung disease.
During this year, the NHS Trusts, CCG and partners have been actively seeking feedback from patients and carers on how services could be improved and how to better help people to manage their condition.
Patients have fed back that they can find it hard to understand their disease, how to manage living with it and how to help themselves feel better.
To address this, more people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a condition that causes breathlessness, are being offered a structured programme of exercise and education.
This involves attending a group with other COPD patients and their carers where all attendees are supported together to understand their disease better.
The courses give attendees an opportunity to do exercises that will help improve their condition and show them how to use their medications to have better control of their symptoms.
This year, patients with COPD and other health conditions were offered an additional review from their GP practice to ensure they had all the information they needed to manage their condition throughout the colder winter period.
Work is now underway to develop integrated specialist teams that focus on prevention and early diagnosis and provide seamless, joined up care and support to patients at all stages of the care journey – at home, in the community and in hospital.