The North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) is celebrating the success of a health and wellbeing initiative which has reached thousands of patients across the North West in the last 18 months.

In October 2017, NWAS launched a campaign to raise awareness of essential health services and share useful wellbeing information with patients using its Patient Transport Service (PTS), which takes people to and from routine appointments.

PTS makes over 1.5 million journeys each year across the North West, so an opportunity was spotted to make use of the time transporting patients by sharing health prevention and promotion advice, making the most of every patient contact.

Since the initiative began, PTS crews have handed out almost 200,000 health leaflets covering a range of topics, from information about the seasonal flu vaccine to health checks that can save your life.

Throughout the scheme, NWAS consulted widely with patients to make sure the information was relevant and useful for them. The scheme saw collaborations with Age UK and the Mental Health Foundation to produce information about tips to boost mental wellbeing and how to live healthily and happily for longer.

Additionally, PTS crews supported ten different health partners to spread the word about their local initiatives.  In St Helens, patients have received information on a number of health services and initativies including the new Urgent Treatment Centre and the St Helens Shared Care Record.

Nathan Hearn, PTS Contract Delivery Manger, said “The nature of our service means we spend time with many different patients every day. We recognised we could make even better use of that time by helping to share important health messages and information about locally available services.

“Thanks to this initiative to transform patient care, PTS patients now have access to more information about health issues and local services.

“NWAS will continue to provide health advice and information to share with patients so they are supported to stay well.”

The health leaflet scheme was part of the NWAS ‘Transforming Patient Care’ programme which has included a number of developments to improve patient care by supporting them as early on in their NHS experience as possible.