Dear LPG, 

In these days, listening to what your doctor has to say is a very literal experience for more and more of us.   It has become very normal to expect your consultation to be an ‘over the phone’ affair.  We have all come to expect more of a DIY experience where the doctor is often depending on your assessment of the colour or feel of an injury, or your perception of the look of a rash to work out what is wrong.  We are having to learn more and more about giving our health professionals an oral description of the basics. 

When we visited our doctors in the past, there would be two fundamental pieces of apparatus that we would expect them to have to hand.  The first is the stethoscope, and the second would be the blood pressure gauge (sphygmomanometer).  There is obviously no point in a layman even hazarding a guess as to what there is to know about what they are listening to through the previously mentioned piece of apparatus but, as we get older, we all know that what our blood pressure is doing needs to be monitored more frequently, and the value of your average blood pressure gauge reading is now so likely to get missed unless we learn to do it ourselves.  It’s all about the true taking of your own blood pressure.

How can you be sure that the result of your readings are accurate?   There are many online instruction videos explaining how to get it right, but how do you really know.

I recently took an online refresher course just to make sure that my technique has not become somewhat less precise, and I found some brief notes on things that might well affect the accuracy of the numbers you produce when you DIY.  

I found a video or two with some hints about being as accurate as possible when taking a reading and thought I would pass this information on.  I sincerely hope that the many older people who really need to monitor their blood pressure can be a little surer that they are getting it right having taken a little look. 

PY, New Cross

PY shares what she has found… 

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