Carys Barton is a Heart Failure Nurse Consultant, Imperial College Healthcare Trust (UK); Chair Elect, British Society for Heart Failure; Junior Secretary, British Association for Nursing in Cardiovascular Care. She is also involved in the Cardio Renal Forum Committee, British Geriatrics Society Cardiovascular Special Interest Group and the Pumping Marvellous Clinical Advisory Group.
I qualified in 1990, and my career has revolved entirely around cardiology nursing, culminating in my current position as a Heart Failure Nurse Consultant – my dream job! I support people and their families to help them live well with heart failure. The relationships we develop, often over many years, are an absolute privilege.
One of the great gifts in my role is that each day can be so different. I may be in a clinical role all day, seeing patients during ward rounds or clinics. On other days, I may be teaching, writing care pathways, implementing new strategies or developing new protocols at the local or national level.
I work in an integrated service that I proudly consider to be an exemplar; we follow the entire patient pathway for heart failure diagnosis and care. However, despite there being amazing services available in the UK, I am very aware of the inequality in service provision – in both resources and access. This is something that definitely needs to be addressed.
I joined because the only way to improve access to evidence-based therapies and advanced treatment options is to collaborate with policymakers. Healthcare professionals work tirelessly, but despite their commitment, they often do not have the resources and capacity to also lobby for change. This requires external support, and the HFPN is well placed to raise our voices.
I would like to see the HFPN support an international heart failure public awareness programme. We also need to unite to boost support across Europe for ensuring equitable access to training and development for specialist nurses and allied health professionals as prescribers. It’s important to make sure these professionals are confident in optimising therapies that are well evidenced to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.
Increasing public awareness is essential. The public is often not aware of the incidence, prevalence and malignancy of heart failure, or that we have fantastic therapies available that are highly effective if it’s diagnosed and treated early. We should be ensuring that heart failure is treated with the same urgency as cancer.
We’ve seen the development of several new therapies. Some of these have enabled us to work more collaboratively with our specialist and primary care colleagues. In particular, the increasing collaboration across cardio-renal-metabolic medicine is a significant step toward providing more personalised and holistic care for people living with heart failure.
I have a great social circle of family (seven adult children and three dogs!) and amazing friends. I have made many close friends through working in heart failure. They’re special people, and I love spending time with them. I talk about heart failure and nursing a lot, so I’m grateful they put up with me!
The Network brings together experts who are united in their passion: to improve outcomes for people living with heart failure.
We share profiles of our members to showcase what led them to work in heart failure, and find out about changes they would like to see in prevention and care.
