Keep Well is a health programme designed to help you keep as well as possible. Health checks may be offered to patients aged 40 – 74 to look for any warning signs of conditions such as heart disease or diabetes developing.

The free NHS Health Check is with a healthcare assistant at your GP practice. You don’t have to wait to be invited but you do have to be eligible. If you are between 40 and 74 contact your GP practice to find out.

A NHS Health Check aims to help you lower your risk of developing these common but often preventable diseases such as heart attack, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease and some forms of dementia.

What’s involved

The check will take around 20 to 30 minutes:

• Your height, weight, sex, ethnicity and age will be recorded
• Your blood pressure will be taken
• A simple blood test will check your cholesterol level
• Your body mass index (BMI) will be calculated. BMI is a measure of whether you’re a healthy weight for your height.
• You will be asked some simple questions about your family history, whether or not you smoke and how much alcohol you drink.

Mythbusters

Is it an intrusive examination?

No. The check is a simple examination with no embarrassing prodding or probing.

Do I have to take my clothes off?

No. It does not involve taking your clothes off or getting naked.

Is 40 too young to need an NHS Health Check?

No, it’s not. Now, more than ever younger men aged 40 are going for their NHS Health Check. 40 is not too young to detect health problems.

Surely, I’m too young to be worried about my health?

40 is not too young to detect health problems such as Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, stroke and dementia. It is much better to find out earlier on.

Will my appointment be with a GP?

No. The health check is with a healthcare assistant or practice nurse.

Is it a good use of public money?

Yes, it helps save the NHS billions in the long run by preventing and detecting illnesses earlier on.

I know what changes I need to make, will I be lectured?

There is no lecturing or telling off, just friendly advice. The healthcare assistant wants to help you.

Is it worth my time?

Yes. It can and has saved lives, just 20 minutes can get you on the right path for a healthy life.

Advice

Following the check, you will receive free personalised advice about what you can do to stay healthy.

If the NHS Health Check does highlight any potential problems you will be offered plenty of advice and support to help you address them.

All the doctors and practice nurses are pleased to help patients with their family planning requirements including pre-conceptual advice. We can fit coils and Implanon. We can also offer advice on emergency contraception.

Oxfordshire Sexual Health Service (OSHS), provide free sexual health screening (tests), treatment, contraception and advice. They also provide care and treatment for people living with HIV.

Our GPs, practice nurses and pharmacists can advise and provide contraception. Our service includes coil and implant fitting, depot injections and emergency contraception, as well as “pills.”

For more information, please visit Sexual Health Oxfordshire.

About the clinic

Diabetes prevention and management is carried out by the Hightown multidisciplinary diabetes team. This is made up of a GP and pharmacist both with a special interest in diabetes. Trained nurses with additional training and qualifications in diabetes. All are diabetes educators.

A diabetic educator provides patients with education and knowledge to develop skills for self management, helping patients to learn the best ways to take care of themselves and manage the day to day challenges of living with diabetes.

Your diabetes educator will ask for information to identify areas where you need the most help as well as your priorities that will help you reach not only your glycaemia (blood glucose) controls but your overall health goals too.

The diabetes clinic serves two main purposes.

The first, and most important, is in providing support to allow patients with diabetes to manage their condition.

The second is to assess for complications of diabetes and ensure appropriate treatment is in place to prevent further complications or, when present, to prevent them from getting worse and hence improve your quality of life.

To enable this discussion and monitoring the clinic will include:

• Healthy eating
• Being active
• Monitoring BP, weight, blood and urine test, feet inspection and care. Injection technique and sites
• Taking medication and altering medication if appropriate
• Reducing risks of the complications of diabetes

Please note that the COVID pandemic has changed the way in which we provide diabetes care within the clinic.

Why attend?

In the short term controlled glucose levels can reduce extreme thirst, frequent urination (including waking through the night to use the toilet) tiredness and weight loss.

In the longer term (years) poorly controlled blood glucose levels can increase the chance of developing complications related to diabetes. Exposure to high blood glucose levels over a long period of time can result in damage to the eyes, kidneys and nerves. Patients with diabetes are also at greater risk of cardiovascular disease. However, with appropriate diabetes care, the chances of developing diabetes complications can be dramatically reduced and, in some cases, where tackled early enough put your diabetes into remission allowing you to reduce medication.

Resources

If you have Type 2 Diabetes you may find the following videos of some help to compliment your understanding and allow you to manage your Diabetes as best as possible for the future.

Type 2 Diabetes Videos

This link is for anyone for speaks Punjabi, Hindi, Polish or Somali

Type 2 Diabetes Videos – Community Languages

Living with Diabetes can be hard. Do you want to feel confident in managing your Type 2 diabetes, improve your mental wellbeing and make and maintain healthy lifestyle choices? If the answer is yes then please check out/refer yourself to the FREE healthy living web based course on the following link;

www.diabetes.org.uk/diabetes-info

Planning a pregnancy and have type 2 diabetes?

Visit Pregnancy and diabetes – Stay Well to learn how to have a safe, healthy pregnancy.

This clinic is led by our practice nursing team. It offers regular follow-up and screening to patients who have coronary heart disease (heart attacks and angina), cerebrovascular disease (strokes and TIAs) and peripheral vascular disease (blocked leg arteries). Patients will be called for review.

The clinics for children under five years are:

• Tuesday 13:30 – 15:30 – Immunisation Clinic

Please see our Cervical Screening page for further information.

• Monday 17:15 – 18:15
• Tuesday 08:00 – 09:10
• Wednesday 08:00 – 10:20

This is provided by our practice nursing team, to help asthmatic / COPD patients monitor their conditions properly and to choose the best form of treatment for their individual circumstances.

If you have been advised by the surgery to submit an annual review of your asthma symptoms please use our Asthma Review form.

If you have been advised by the surgery to submit a COPD assessment please our COPD Assessment form.