Cardiac Support Group Starting

The Heart Center of Penn Highlands DuBois is hosting its first Cardiac Support Group meeting at 2:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 8, in the Patient Conference Room of The Heart Center located on the fifth floor of PH DuBois West.

Meetings will be held from 2:30-3:30 p.m. every second Tuesday of the month in The Heart Center’s Patient Conference Room. Anyone who has been diagnosed with heart disease and/or have gone through heart procedures, along with their families, are invited to attend. There is no cost to attend.

“We want to provide heart education for our Penn Highlands Healthcare community,” Annette Agosti, RN, director of the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit at The Heart Center.

When patients are discharged or visit their healthcare providers, they are given information. “So much information is thrown at them at once,” she said. A person could be overwhelmed and may have developed questions. This will allow a patient to go back over this information and have someone there to provide answers.

“This is something we felt was necessary as The Heart Center,” Agosti said. “There is always new information. Treatments and medications change,” she said. This will help patients understand how to live with heart disease.

To help with the most up-to-date information, the group will be using the HeartCaring program of the Women’s Health Center of Penn Highlands Healthcare. HeartCaring strives to raise awareness to the risk of cardiovascular disease in all patients. A nationally recognized program, it provides guidance to patients to make lifestyle changes to both control disease and lower risk.

How will the group meeting work? Guest speakers will be from Penn Highlands Healthcare and will provide a brief presentation to stimulate discussion and conversation among the group. Attendees will be encouraged to share concerns and challenges they are facing.

At the first meeting, March 8, the topic will be “Understanding the Diagnosis of Heart Disease.”

Other topics scheduled for 2016 will be:
• April 12 - “Common Medications You May Take for Your Heart”
• May 10 – “Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) — What does that mean?”
• June 14 – “Grocery Shopping for a Healthy Heart”
• July 12 – “Exercise and Fitness”
• Aug. 9 – “Irregular Heart Beat- Atrial Fibrillation”
• Sept. 13 – “Your Legs and Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) - Screenings and Education”
• Oct. 11 – “Portion Control”
• Nov. 8 – “Holiday Stress”
• Dec. 13 – “Sugar and Salt”

For more information about this group, call Agosti at 375-7706 or go to www.phhealthcare.org/supportgroups and click on the Cardiac Support Group name.

Or you can visit The Heart Center table at any of the Day of Dance events in the region. Day of Dance offers dance demonstrations and health information with a focus on heart health. Free to attend, all events will be held from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Feb. 27: at The DuBois Mall, DuBois, and The Sacred Heart Community Center, St. Marys, in conjunction with the Elk Business Expo. And it will be held 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, March 5 at the Pinecrest Country Club, Brookville, and Expo I Building, Clearfield.