Workshop for Open Heart Nurses

Specialties CCU

Published

Hi, I'm going to be teaching a workshop for nurses who will be caring for open heart patients. These are normally med-surg nurses who will be caring for pediatric (12-20 years old) valve replacement patients for a couple of weeks. (It's a special situation involving a volunteer team in a developing nation.) I want to prepare them as best I can but am wondering what I should teach them in a workshop that will last a maximum of four hours.

So far I'm thinking, the basics of the procedure, the common risks/complications, what to assess for, pharmacology, and labs (which ones are needed and why). We won't have monitors/telemetry (they spend a few hours on the monitor after surgery to make sure they're stable), and EKGs will be interpreted by doctors, so I'm thinking I won't go into that.

Grateful for ideas or recommendations for resources!

Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

You should also include some discussion of associated murmurs, and the need for life-long anticoagulation. I think if you break it down into which valve is involved and do them separately, with basic cardiac anatomy and physiology for each, you could fill 4 hours no problem.

Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

An overview of pulmonary hypertension maybe?

PS: What an exciting opportunity!

Great suggestions, thank you!

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