Living Well with COPD aims to keep you as fit and well as possible, enabling you to be in control of your condition and spending more time at home and less time in hospital.
The evidence is very strongly in support of these activities and people who follow them do better in terms of slowing progression of their disease and spending more time well at home. The Nurse you work with will help you to design your personal Living Well with COPD plan, and they and your Health Coach will provide encouragement and support in completing it.
It is really important that you have all your seasonal vaccinations each year- Flu and the covid booster. Check you have had your one-off pneumonia vaccine too.
Being as active as you can is really important. Even just reducing the time you are sitting can have a big improvement in your health. Regular activity is a must for everyone living with COPD. NHS Get Active
Revising and improving your inhaler technique will help to better manage respiratory symptoms.
Learn more
This education and exercise programme is found to markedly help those with COPD.
Learn more
Stopping is an important step for improving symptoms and slow disease progression.
NHS Quit Smoking
Having a plan of how to identify and manage a worsening of your symptoms can give you control and reduce the risk of needing a hospital admission. If you are feeling worse than usual, follow the instructions in the Rescue Pack Leaflet.
It is important to have a healthy weight being underweight or obese can worsen your symptoms and risk of flare ups (exacerbations).
NHS Drink Less
NHS Lose Weight
People with COPD are more likely to experience anxiety and depression. Especially in people who have hospital stays due to their COPD. Seeking support is a vital part of living well with COPD.
NHS Every Mind Matters
You will be given access to myCOPD that provides valuable information on most of the key factors listed above. Research has demonstrated it is extremely effective. For instance, people who view the inhaler technique videos increase the accuracy of their medication delivery markedly.
Watch introduction video
Learn more
If you’d like any help with the myCOPD app or have any issues, please contact us and we will do our best to help.
Winter can be a difficult time of year if you have a lung condition. Here’s some useful advice from Asthma + Lung to help you stay well this winter.
Asthma + Lung | Winter lung health
Home monitoring means that there is a clinical team providing support for your care at home. You connect with them by providing regular information about your health via short questionnaires or sharing results on a tablet or mobile phone. The team reviews this information via dashboards and provides advice and support. This may be via video calls, phone calls or direct messaging through the app. The team is made up of nurses, doctors and also health coaches.
You will be given full support to set up home monitoring and send across results by a dedicated team.
Home monitoring is also sometimes known as remote monitoring, remote patient monitoring (RPM) or digital home care. These are all the same thing.
A Health Coach works with you to complete those activities that keep you well at home.
They work alongside the Clinical Team to provide personalised support.
This includes helping you complete your COPD plan to keep you living well with COPD.
If your condition does deteriorate, you may be referred into the COPD Virtual Ward, or Hospital at Home service.
This is similar to home monitoring but you will be more closely monitored by the doctors and nurses from the Integrated Respiratory Team and may receive visits in the home.
This team is an important part of the partnership and is delivered by Sirona Health and Care.
“The service has been excellent. It’s so much better for me to be at home – I can have what I like to eat, a nice cup of tea and a good night’s sleep in my own bed. I feel like I made a quicker recovery because I was at home. I was so grateful someone was looking after me, and you’re in constant contact with the team, so you feel so safe. The tech was easy to understand, and everyone was so patient in explaining it to me. I’d recommend Hospital at Home to anyone.”
Living Well is a partnership between the NHS, and Doccla, who provide the technology and team, and my mhealth who provide the myCOPD app. The NHS partners are
University Hospitals
Bristol and Weston
NHS Foundation Trust
North Bristol
NHS Trust
Bristol, North Somerset
and South Gloucestershire
Integrated Care Board
my mhealth
