Workshop for Open Heart Nurses

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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!

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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.

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

An overview of pulmonary hypertension maybe?

PS: What an exciting opportunity!

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Great suggestions, thank you!

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