FutureLearn

Heart Health: A Beginner's Guide to Cardiovascular Disease (FutureLearn)

Offered by University of Reading,
Heart Health: A Beginner's Guide to Cardiovascular Disease (FutureLearn)

Learn more about how your heart works, the causes of heart disease and how to keep your heart healthy with this free online course. Learn how to keep your heart healthy. Your heart beats around 100,000 times a day, pumping blood around your body to deliver oxygen and nutrients, while taking away waste products. When your heart is unhealthy, it can’t perform this vital task so effectively.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see FutureLearn's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

This course will improve your knowledge of how the heart works, the causes of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure and heart failure and what you can do to avoid them.
Each week you’ll be able to get hands on with a practical activity, helping you to apply the knowledge you’ll gain on the course, to better understand your own heart.

Syllabus

Week 1: Cardiovascular anatomy and physiology
Week 2: Angina, heart attacks and strokes
Week 3: Heart failure, hypertension, valvular disease and arrhythmias
Week 4: Risk factors and prevention

What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

  • Describe the structure and function of the cardiovascular system, including the circulatory system and heart
  • Describe the basis of several cardiovascular diseases including heart attacks, strokes, hypertension and heart failure
  • Evaluate the various risk factors that can contribute towards increasing a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease
  • Discuss some of the lifestyle choices that we can make to try and reduce our risk of cardiovascular disease
  • Apply theoretical knowledge and investigate a topic through practical activities
  • Investigate and process data
  • Investigate a topic and evaluate the reliability of your sources

Who is the course for?
This course is aimed at anyone with an interest in how the heart works and the diseases that commonly affect it. It will help if you have a basic understanding of human biology, but we’ll explain things in a way that will be easy for those who are unfamiliar with the subject. If you get stuck, you can always ask questions in the comments and other learners may be able to help you.
Healthcare practitioners may also enjoy this as a gentle refresher or resource to share with patients.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Infant Nutrition: from Breastfeeding to Baby's First Solids (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
Deakin University

Infant Nutrition: from Breastfeeding to Baby's First Solids (FutureLearn)

Health & Society

Learn what good infant nutrition looks like, how and what to feed a baby, and how to start weaning. Explore the principles of good nutrition in the first 12 months of a baby’s life. In this insightful course led by nutritional experts from Deakin University, you’ll trace the milestones in a baby’s first year of life to learn about the principles of good infant nutrition and how you can apply them. You’ll explore the nutritional requirements of young children, as well as why healthy food for babies is so essential.

Self Paced
2 Weeks
Health Nutrition Development
Details
Understanding Insulin (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Southampton

Understanding Insulin (FutureLearn)

Sci: Biology & Life Sciences Health & Society

Learn more about all things insulin: from how it works, to insulin types, to side effects and guidance on how to prescribe safely. The current spend on diabetes care by the NHS is estimated to be £1.6 million pounds per hour. 80% of this is spent on managing diabetes complications, the risk of which can be significantly reduced through effective blood glucose control using insulin.

Self Paced
4 Weeks
Health Healthcare Diabetes
Details
Understanding Anxiety, Depression and CBT (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Reading

Understanding Anxiety, Depression and CBT (FutureLearn)

Health & Society Medicine & Pharmacology

Improve your understanding of depression and anxiety and find out more about an effective and evidence-based treatment: CBT. Anxiety and depression are terms discussed widely, in different media and amongst family and friends. But what do those labels actually mean? On this five week course, from the University of Reading, you will explore what it means to have anxiety or depression and how they are identified.

Self Paced
5-12 Weeks
Health Depression Anxiety
Details
ECG Assessment: an Introduction for Healthcare Providers (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
St George's, University of London

ECG Assessment: an Introduction for Healthcare Providers (FutureLearn)

Health & Society Medicine & Pharmacology

Understand the principles of electrocardiography and learn a step-by-step approach to the ECG test, with this free online course. The electrocardiograph (also known as electrocardiogram) or ECG is a non-invasive diagnostic procedure, commonly used to assess people with known or suspected heart disease, in a variety of healthcare settings. Competent recording, reading and interpretation is vital to ensure safe and effective care, yet ECGs are commonly undertaken by unqualified and junior staff, who have received little training.

Self Paced
2 Weeks
Medicine Healthcare Heart Disease
Details
Introduction to Health Technology Assessment (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Glasgow

Introduction to Health Technology Assessment (FutureLearn)

Engineering Health & Society

Learn about health technology assessment (HTA) and quality of life (QoL), and how they’re used to decide which treatments to fund. Get an introduction to health technology assessment (HTA). This online course provides a short, interactive introduction to health technology assessment (HTA), based on the University of Glasgow’s successful online distance-learning programme, the MSc in HTA.

Self Paced
3 Weeks
Health Healthcare Health Technology Assessment
Details
Inside Cancer: How Genes Influence Cancer Development (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Bath

Inside Cancer: How Genes Influence Cancer Development (FutureLearn)

Sci: Biology & Life Sciences Medicine & Pharmacology

Understand how genetics influence the development and spread of cancer, with this free, introductory online course. What is the one thing that all cancers have in common? They begin as mutant or rebel cells! In this course we will explore how changes in cancer genetics and epigenetics enables these cells to grow uncontrollably, by exploiting our blood vessels and immune system along with other systemic changes.

Self Paced
4 Weeks
Medicine Science Biology
Details
Health and Wellbeing in the Ancient World (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
The Open University

Health and Wellbeing in the Ancient World (FutureLearn)

Health & Society Humanities

Use literary and archaeological evidence to see how ancient Greeks and Romans approached health, well-being and societal issues. What did being healthy in ancient Rome or Greece look like? How can we tell what well-being meant in ancient times? This online course will help you investigate these questions, using both literary and archaeological evidence, to uncover details of real life in ancient societies.

Self Paced
5-12 Weeks
Health Ancient Greece Ancient Rome
Details
Introduction to Critical Care Medicine (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Glasgow

Introduction to Critical Care Medicine (FutureLearn)

Health & Society

Learn how to handle complex issues faced in Critical Care Units when other options on the ward have been exhausted. Learn how to manage common presentations seen in Critical Care Units. Critical care is an emerging specialty in hospitals and, with an increasing population living with multiple co-morbidites, the burden on Critical Care Units is rising. In this course, find out about the common presentations seen in a Critical Care Unit and how to manage them effectively.

Self Paced
3 Weeks
Health Critical Care Pneumonia
Details
Causes of Human Disease: Understanding Causes of Disease (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Leeds

Causes of Human Disease: Understanding Causes of Disease (FutureLearn)

Engineering Health & Society

Learn the epidemiological methods used to understand the causes of diseases and how social factors influence their development. What causes human disease? Why do some people get a disease but others don’t? Through this course, you’ll learn how epidemiologists are helping to find answers to these complex questions and how the health of a population is measured and analysed.

Self Paced
2 Weeks
Health Disease Epidemiology
Details
Causes of Human Disease: Exploring Cancer and Genetic Disease (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Leeds

Causes of Human Disease: Exploring Cancer and Genetic Disease (FutureLearn)

Health & Society Science

Explore how the unravelling of genetic code has led to a deeper understanding of genetic diseases and cancer. It’s widely known that some diseases run in families. The discovery of the structure of DNA and the unravelling of the genetic code has led to a deeper understanding of such diseases. We now know more about the genetic basis of cancer and how cancer cells are formed and reproduce. On this course you’ll explore the structure of DNA, its processes and learn how genetic disease results from DNA alterations.

Self Paced
2 Weeks
Health Genetics Cancer
Details