Table 2.

Example health state

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Disease	• You have a condition which means you have high blood pressure in your lungs. This puts a strain on the right side of your heart as it has to work harder to push blood through the lungs to pick up oxygen.
Main symptoms	• You often feel tired.
	• You find it difficult to breathe (experience shortness of breath) when you climb stairs and cannot keep up with others when walking on the flat.
	• You often feel light-headed (dizzy) when you stand up.
	• You can sometimes experience pain and a feeling of tightness in your chest when undertaking exercise such as walking at the same pace as others on the flat (level ground) or carrying shopping.
Impacts	• You cannot do things in the house that need a lot of physical effort such as vacuuming, carrying shopping, or gardening.
	• You are able to work, but you cannot do anything at work that involves a lot of physical exertion, such as carrying heavy objects.
	• You are able to socialize, but you cannot do sports or physical activities that involve a lot of physical exertion.
	• You are able to travel for work or holidays but this needs to be planned in advance and routes that involve stairs and a lot of walking will be more difficult.
Treatment	• Every 3 months you have a medical assessment involving blood tests. This takes about half a day.
	• To stabilize your symptoms and to prevent your condition from getting worse, you are treated with medication.
	• You need to take 2 types of tablets each day.
	• Tablet 1 needs to be taken twice a day.
	• Tablet 2 needs to be taken three times a day.
	• You also take a medication that is delivered directly into your bloodstream through a narrow, flexible tube called a catheter. This is inserted under local anesthetic into a vein leading to your heart.
	• The catheter is linked with a thin tube to a plastic container of the drug fixed to a pump, which you need to carry with you at all times. The pump is about the size of a calculator and weighs approximately 400 g (about the weight of a tin of beans).
	• To have the catheter inserted, and to learn how to prepare the plastic containers and use the pump, you stay in hospital for 7 days.
	• You should not get the pump wet, so you should protect this with a waterproof covering when showering. You should not go swimming with the pump.
	• Once you have learnt how to get the medication ready, you can fill seven plastic containers needed for a week on the same day, and store them in the fridge. This takes you about one hour.
	• You need to change the medication plastic container daily. This takes about 10 minutes.
	• The catheter site needs to be cleaned carefully at least once a week so that it does not get infected. The cleaning takes about 5–10 minutes.