Breathlessness

World COPD Day is a day in November marked annually by many individuals living with COPD and healthcare professionals, as well as many national and international foundations and organisations, doing something of their choice to raise awareness of COPD. To date, there has not been a coordinated awareness campaign on World COPD Day which joins …

The Big Baton Pass: hoping to change the way we mark World COPD Day in the future Read More »

Last weekend I took the Bringing breathlessness into view exhibition to the beautiful Hepworth Arcade for Hull’s Freedom Festival. The exhibition was described in the program as ‘a unique collaboration between the Medical and the Arts world’ and I was very heartened by the public response to it! Over five days there were 199 visitors, many …

Taking our exhibition to the Freedom Festival Read More »

Well, here in Hull at the Wolfson Palliative Care Research Centre we have been researching how different airflow speeds from a handheld fan affect recovery from breathlessness in both patients and healthy people. We aimed to find out what is the best airflow speed from a fan to help recovery from breathlessness. In our fan …

How can a simple fan help with your recovery from breathlessness? Read More »

What is it like when the symptoms of people living with COPD get much worse and what language do they use to describe this? This is what we aimed to understand in our study in which we interviewed 40 people from around England. Generally clinicians say that someone is having an exacerbation if their symptoms …

Understanding people’s experiences of exacerbations Read More »

This wonderful set of booklets popped through my letterbox the other day and immediately caught my attention! They were beautifully presented and had much in them to appeal to the senses. Sometimes as a researcher it is easy to get caught up in thinking rather than paying attention to the senses and yet everyone’s daily …

Reflecting on the ‘Sensing Spaces of Healthcare’ booklets Read More »

There are times when daily life feels like a huge effort for all of us, and for all the people living with breathlessness every single day life brings many challenges and it can certainly be a struggle! We can all do with a bit of encouragement at times can’t we? Keep going, you can do …

Keep going, you can do it! Read More »

Many of us find asking for helping difficult and yet most of us like to be able to help others! Why is there this contradiction? Maybe because for a lot of us our pride gets in the way. June made her image for the exhibition to encourage others to feel that it’s ok to ask …

It’s ok to ask for help Read More »

Here’s what Anna Bean and Rob Mackay had to say about their experience of co-creating the Bringing Breathlessness into View exhibition. Anna Bean: I’ve found it really positive being an artist on this project. I’ve really enjoyed working on a project connected to the university, because of the ongoing nature of it and because it …

What do artists think about working on our exhibition? Read More »

Where are we going? What are our aims? Are we getting there? This exhibition was designed to give insight into what it is like living with breathlessness, with the use of strong images and personal narratives. In the video below I describe how we aim to bring breathlessness out into the open and help people …

Where are we going with this exhibition? Read More »

Although breathlessness causes people lots of difficulties there are many ways of coping with it! The collage shown above was made by Eric who wanted to show what was important to him in coping with breathlessness: exercising, getting support from others and finding helpful information. It’s a hopeful image with the sun coming out from …

Coping with breathlessness Read More »