Hundreds of people headed to Blandford Group Practice’s Men’s Health Event at their recent event which offered free health checks and advice.

Nearly 600 people of all ages attended the Crown Hotel, with the team from Blandford Group Practice carrying out over 80 cholesterol check, 200 blood sugar checks and an even higher number of blood pressure checks.

Clinical Lead Dr Lucy Purcell praised everyone involved for their hard work and support,

“This event was a great success. Thanks to our Wellbeing and Nurse Teams our PPG members our Mens’ Health Event was a big success that was well supported by the population of Blandford Primary Care Network.

“I was incredibly impressed with the breadth of local services and charities who attended to highlight the support available to our patients.

“The blood pressure and cholesterol checks were very popular and have helped us identify those patients at increased cardiovascular risk, this supports our vision for preventative medicine to improve long term health outcomes for our population.”

The practice has been holding Wellness Walk in Events for nearly 2 years now, attracting around 75-80 people. The New Year New You event attracted around 115 people. Despite sending out text messages to patients for the Men’s Health Event, the team did not expect the amount of people that attended.

Dr Paul. Johnson said,

“There is a lot of brilliant work going on across the county by general practice. This is a fantastic example of a community health event really benefitting local people.

“This event has supported people to have awareness about their own health needs. Checks such as blood pressure and cardiovascular will help to improve people’s health and wellbeing. Brilliant work and well done to the whole team at Blandford Group Practice.”

Patients with reading outside of the normal scale were offered the appropriate support and asked to either complete a seven-day diary of readings or in some cases an appointment at their general practice.

Staff were also able to sign up several patients to the BP at home programme, which is an app for patients to monitor blood pressure from home. If eligible, patients submit blood pressure readings via the app, the readings are then monitored by clinicians in the practice. Over 30 patients either signed up to this,  or were sent the link to do so.

The overwhelming response to this event has encouraged the team to hold events in all the local villages from July to reach even more people in the area. The next pop up clinic is 30 July at The Old Power House in Bryanston.

For more information visit Homepage – The Blandford Group Practice