Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode
of the Nurse station podcast.
In today's episode, we have nurses coming together
to talk about the importance of taking care
of our hot.
This session is eligible for contact hours and
in disclosure in compliance with Anc
commission on accreditation. This educational activity does not
include any content that relates to the products
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would create a conflict of interest.
Today, we have some expert nurse panel here
with us today, join across the health system.
My name is Michelle Rasmussen Mu, and I
am a nursing quality specialist here at Tis
kim.
Hi. My name is Lauren Moran. I'm a
nursing professional development specialist on the Long Island
campus, and I cover the neuroscience units, as
well as the resource pools.
Hi. My name is Kim Marshall. I'm on
M mp DSI
cover Si CUCTIC
trauma and 4 North telemetry from the Long
Island campus.
Hi. My name is Amy Marco. I'm the
mechanical circulatory support, clinical resource nurse, and I'm
on the Manhattan campus.
Hi. My name is Adrian Dora. I'm a
staff red. Distributors nurse for traumatic brain injury
and stroke rehab at Ru Institute H.
Hi. My name Joanna Marvel. I'm the Stroke
program coordinator at the Nyu land and Brooklyn
campus. Great. Thank you, everyone, and thank you
for joining us today and for those
introductions.
So I am sure of many of you
who are listening in today. Already know that
February is hot health awareness month. A time
when people focus on their cardiovascular
health.
Here at Nyu, we celebrate national wear Red
Day on February third to help raise awareness
about heart disease.
So as I was researching various topics on
hot disease for this podcast, third I came
across an article and learned that prevent and
reverse hot disease is a central mission of
the Nyu lang,
hot initiative, which was launched in 20 22
to ensure that every patient we treat benefits
from the latest practices
guidance and life even
interventions. So
I know that 1 of our life even
interventions is definitely a ventricular assist devices.
So, Amy, as the mechanical circulatory
supports Crm. Can you tell us a little
bit more about the program?
So
Our advanced heart failure team is really committed
to making sure we have the best offerings
for patients who are presenting, you know, with
acute and chronic symptoms of advanced heart failure,
and Mcs device are a really great option
for these patients. We have a range of
temporary devices, including Imp to an visual heart.
We have, you know, cent temporary ads, but
what I primary work with is a durable
L device. So these are for patients with
your class for heart failure.
Who we've really tried to optimize using guided
medical practice, but despite
optimization, they're continuing to deteriorate from their disease,
and it gives these patients a pathway to
prolong life and also improve quality of life.
So our team is very committed and made
of a multi approach. These patients, you know,
have a lot of clinical and emotional needs.
So it it really is a a really
beautiful collaboration between our surgeons, like cardiologist,
our nurse practitioner team, the nurses, all the
staff who care for these patients on the
units, our social work team, our diet pharmacy,
all over our therapy, It's it's really a
great collaboration to ensure that these patients really
do get the best care, especially since they
are supported with this, you know, complex intervention.
Wow. That's really amazing And I'm sure that
the collaboration is certainly key to that. And
I'm sure that there's a lot of clinical
needs that need to be met to meet
the needs of these patients. And I'm sure
there's a lot of training to guide these
nurses on how to care for these patients
and a lot of education.
Sounds really exciting. And, you know, I hear
a lot about Nyu Land hot initiative, you
know, through Raw social media sites. There's been
recent articles that have been posted at are
all just they're so dynamic and so excited
to hear how we're Karen for these patients.
I'm really trying to improve their quality of
life.
Agreed. Thank you, Amy. It just sounds like
such an amazing program. So I wanted to
ask Kim as the nursing professional development specialist
of the cardio I see on the long
island campus, can you tell us a little
bit about what like taking care of patients
with the ventricular assist device both in the
Icu setting
telemetry settings?
Sure, Lauren. Thank you for the question, and
glad to be here.
So education for the patient and the nurse
is so important for them to understand the
use of the left ventricular assist device known
as the L.
For both the patient and the bedside nurse.
Giving the patient control over the situation by
having involved in their care during the hospital
stay is key.
This creates a strong nurse patient
relationship that will build trust in the care
of the patient with El.
Some of the care that the nurses door,
and will complete at the bedside and surgical
Icu include dressing changes, drive line changes, control
a system checks, or battery checks and finding
patients mean material pressure by utilizing a doppler
on the patient's break post.
Nurses also have to understand what the patient
is going through with the implant of this
device. The outcome may look different for every
patient. Whether it it be a bridge to
transplant, that's when the patient's receiving a heart
or a
destination therapy,
That's a patient living with an l for
the rest of their lives until death.
This is 1 emotional support. Comes from nurses.
It comes into play for both the patient
and their family.
It does take a team as Amy said,
to take care of these patients. And the
team at Nyu
Long Island is here to help our L
community patients
transition through the Si
stay.
More smoothly.
Wow. That's the me. And, you know, I'm
sure it really is a lot of work
that it takes to really support those types
of patients, you know, like, as you said,
whether it's a bridge to transplant
or if they will living in with these
devices.
So Adrian as a clinical nurse who sees
these patients on the rehab of side. Can
you tell us a little bit more from
the clinical,
bedside nurse perspective on, you know, how you
are able to take care of these patients
and offer them that emotional support?
It's really very challenging because, first of all,
when they are in acute rehab that's when
frustration sets in because, like, you know, they're
able to determine what they can't and can
do.
So,
we are just doing lots of positive reinforcements
to make sure that, you know, they are,
like, kept on the right track.
And also, we're setting, like, our goals
weekly. So we are, more realistic with it.
And also, be for this charge, we're having
this weakened
stroke class
with emphasis on, like, a
heart health
medication management at home because, usually,
our stroke patients are really not that aware
of, like, the connection between
like,
stroke and heart health
because when they tend to ask about, like,
brain health, their focused mostly is on memory.
So we try to, like, reinforce them as
to how helpful it is that if you
take care of your heart, you're somehow, like,
taking care of your brain as well. So
it kinda like incentivize them
and also, like, it increases, like, medication compliance
at home.
Thank you, Adrian.
As a neuroscience nurse myself, I love that
you brought up the brain. We can't talk
about the heart without mentioning the brain. So
I'm glad we have joanna here today, Joanna,
I wanna ask you, can you tell us
about the stroke program here at Nyu land
in any new initiatives related to stroke? Joanna
I'm Joanna Mar I'm 1 of the stroke
program coordinators and our stroke program is unique.
We have 3 campuses that are comprehensive stroke
centers, which means that we're able to provide
highest level of stroke care to all patients,
whether they have a hem stroke or an
ischemic stroke, and we also have an inpatient
rehab unit that's certified as the stroke rehabilitation
unit at the Brooklyn campus.
Like Warren said, like Adrian mentioned you really
can't talk about the heart without bringing up
the brain and you can talk about the
brain without bringing up the heart
We always say that the best stroke is
the stroke that never happened, the 1 that
was prevented, and the only way you can
do that is by optimizing your cardiovascular health.
1 of the newest initiatives that we have
all taken as program coordinators from our latest
visit to the International Stroke Conference.
Was the American Heart Association life essential 8.
The life essential 8 is 8 metrics that
are utilized to optimize cardiovascular health
used to be called life simple 7, but
most recently in June of 20 22. They
upgraded it to 8 to include,
sleep health. It So the 8 metrics they
look at to optimize cardiovascular health is healthy
diet. So teaching our patients how to eat
better.
Management of weight, how can we help our
patients maintain a healthy body weight,
being more active,
how do we get our patients especially post
stroke patients are really just patients who have
recently left hospital as we get them back
into the community,
resuming activity that they would have previously done
and increasing their activity more so than they
ever have in their life.
Also talks about controlling cholesterol.
Previously,
life simple 7 only looked at total cholesterol,
but most recently, they're looking at non Hdl
cholesterol. How do we help our patients improve
it? Do we teach them about taking their
statins timely?
We make sure that they're on a high
intensity set when they're discharged, are they following
up with their doctors correctly.
Life Essential aid also looks at nicotine exposure
So previously, they were only looking at smoking?
Are we teaching our patients not to smoke,
But most recently, they've updated it just to
nicotine exposure to account for people who are
vaping and e cigarette use.
We also talk about managing blood sugar, so
teaching our patients once again, have do eat
a healthy diet and keep their blood sugar
in a a nice range, how to optimize
their hemoglobin A1c.
We talk about healthy sleep, sleep something that's
been overlooked a lot when it comes to
Cardiovascular health, but now life essentially, it really
highlights the need for around 7 to 9
hours of sleep dependent on one's age and
you know I laugh at that because as
nurses we're always here telling our patients what
they should be doing to make themselves healthier,
but I'm reading 7 to 9 hours of
sleep meanwhile, I think I only got 3
last night. So
ties into even though we're teaching our patients
this, it's important for us to follow it
as well.
And lastly about managing blood pressure.
By using Life essential 8, we can kind
of structure the education we provide to our
patients as well as provide them with resources
outside of the health system
Life essential 8 has this thing called my
toolkit.
It's a my life check online. Anybody can
access it as long as they have Internet
access.
You can go on and you could put
in your own part healthy habits, how much
do you sleep at night? What was your
latest cholesterol?
What's your hemoglobin a1c? It will actually rank
you on a scale from 0 to 100,
and it will let you know where your
cardiovascular health is where it should be and
what steps you can take to optimize it.
And This is something again comes from the
American Heart Association and it comes from their
Presidential Advisory committee, which to me is super
important because this committee influences public policy.
And the. Us. Really, we haven't really talked
about preventative medicine enough, and it's a good
sign that our country and our health systems
throughout are really moving towards a preventative measure
because once again, the best stroke is the
stroke that never happens.
Some other initiatives that we do related to
stroke and cardiovascular health is really just partnering
with our preventative cardiology team and while you
has the center for prevention of cardiovascular
disease
and our attending often give lecture series through
there that are available to staff, patients, caregivers
and the community, which is really helpful.
And we also do an annual stroke C.
At this stroke C this year, we had
a guest speaker. Her name was Doctor. Gina
Gia.
She's a preventative cardiologist from North, and she
spoke to our group about optimizing
residual r and stroke by
giving the latest lifestyle and advanced preventative therapies
for patients who don't have great cardiovascular health
and definitely have room for improvement.
Wow, Joanna. Thank you so much for that
overview of our stroke program and all those
tips you gave us to take care of
our hearts and our brains, which is really
what this month is all about.
So I wanna thank you all so much
for joining us today and being a valuable
resource to our nursing staff and community. We
hope that our listeners found this discussion helpful
and useful to their practice.
You can find links to the resources on
our website, and for any questions or comments,
please email hash is tag nursing station podcast
or a nursing station podcast at n nyu
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