Look After Your Heart. Have a Regular Heart Check.
This heart check leaflet for prisoners, their families and Corrections staff promotes regular heart checks. It provides information about getting regular heart checks, including who is most at risk and what a heart check involves.
The full resource:
NOTE: This Department of Corrections resource cannot be ordered from this website. All men’s prisons throughout New Zealand received hard copies of this resource in July 2013.
Look after your heart. Have a regular heart check.
- If you’re a man over 45 or a woman over 55, have a regular heart check.
- If you’re Māori, Pasifika or Indo-Asian, start having a regular heart check ten years earlier (35 for men and 45 for women).
- If you have a family history of heart disease or other risk factors, start having a regular heart check ten years earlier (35 for men and 45 for women).
Find out more
Put in a health request form (health chit) to talk to a corrections nurse from your health centre.
If you have a heart check at your health centre, a nurse will:
- ask if anyone in your family has had problems with their heart (for example, a heart attack, a stroke or angina)
- weigh and measure you, including taking a measurement of your waist
- check your blood pressure
- ask if you smoked before coming to prison
- arrange for you to have blood tests to check your cholesterol levels and to check for diabetes.
If the nurse needs to talk to you about your blood tests, they will ask you to come back to the health centre. If necessary, the nurse will make an appointment for you to see the prison doctor.
If the results of your blood tests are normal, the nurse won’t need to contact you. You can ask the nurse for a copy of your blood test.
If you are at risk of having heart problems, then you may need to take some medication or get some extra information about your diet and exercise. The nurse will talk to you about these things.
If you are not at risk, it is always good to get more information about how to look after your heart so that you stay healthy as you grow older.