I hope everyone had a great Christmas and that you are now looking forward to the New Year celebrations 🤞
Rosemary (RosyG) has asked me to make you aware of the next Surrey Arrhythmia Support Group meeting using Zoom, next Wednesday 5th January at 5.30pm which is a little later than normal.
We are very lucky to have Dr Stephen Cookson to talk on AF and Hypertension. He hasn’t spoken to our group before so I thought you would like some information about him,
Dr Cookson attended King’s College London where he graduated with the MBBS degree and with first class honours in an intercalated BSc in radiological sciences. He undertook cardiology speciality training in the Wessex region and is recognised as a specialist in both cardiology and general internal medicine. His areas of expertise include cardiac MRI, cardiac CT and echocardiography (transthoracic, transoesophageal and stress).
He has been a consultant cardiologist at The Royal Surrey County Hospital since 2015. He is currently lead for cardiovascular disease at Surrey Heartlands ICS, and lead for out-patients transformation at Royal Surrey. He is working on projects to enable rapid diagnosis of common conditions (ECG @ home), and to allow patients the ability to plan their own follow up appointments (patient initiated follow up).
He is also the deputy chair of Surrey Heartlands Area Prescribing Committee
He is currently a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Surrey County Hospital where his other roles include being responsible for the safe working hours of over 200 junior medical staff within the hospital and the deputy chair of the drugs & therapeutics committee.
His work in establishing the GP advice & guidance service was recognised by the Health Service Journal in 2018. He wrote the Surrey anticoagulation guidelines which received national recognition by the HSJ and from the AF Association, who awarded a Healthcare Pioneers award in 2019.
We are very lucky to attract such well informed and supportive speakers so please try to attend if you can. It’s important for our speakers to know they are reaching a lot of patients when they give their time to help us. We will have our usual questions at the end and Dr Cookson is fully qualified in internal medicine too so can answer very broad questions.
If you would like to listen, watch or even participate in the meeting and are not already on Rosemary’s email list, please contact her on info@surreyasg.co.uk and she will send you the details necessary to join the meeting. If you have a particular question for Dr Cookson, please include it in your email to Rosemary and he will do his best to respond. Please do not ask your questions on the forum because it’s unlikely that Rosemary will see them.
For those not familiar with using zoom, I have added a tutorial which most have found helpful. Looking forward to seeing you next Wednesday…….
Jx 
Exciting new opportunity to help patients with AF!
Xa Anticoagulants
