TEAM CARE
Practicing
good medicine involves bedside care, insight, good nutrition
and taking care of the emotional and social needs of
patients and their families.
Nurses play an integral role
Nurses
work in a variety of settings within Texas Children’s
Heart Center. Each team’s area of expertise contributes
to the care received by cardiology patients and their
families.
The nurses educate parents about their children’s
conditions and teach them how to care for their children
at home.
“Many of the cardiology nurses in the Heart Center draw from 10 or more years of nursing experience with pediatric
cardiology patients.”
Nurse
practitioners and coordinators
One of the most exciting aspects of
Texas Children’s cardiology nursing is the development
of the pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP) program. These
advanced practice nurses assess and evaluate a patient’s
medical history and physical condition, write orders and
prescribe medications.
A nurse coordinator uses a triage system
for scheduling patients in the outpatient clinic. When
a patient arrives for an appointment, a registered nurse
assesses the patient’s status and prepares the child
for the doctor’s exam.
The nurse also coordinates the care prescribed by the
doctor. Nurses in the echocardiography lab, transplant
services and pacemaker clinic keep the families informed
while procedures are performed.
In
the catheterization lab
Working closely with the physicians,
nurses in this lab assist in choosing catheters and wires
best suited for patients. They document the cases and
sedate patients before catheterization.
In addition, a nurse coordinator acts as a liaison between
referring physicians, Texas Children’s cardiologists
and the patients’ families.
Surgical
nurse clinicians
Surgery patients receive care from
teams of nurses during each stage: preoperative, operative
and postoperative care.
Before surgery, the nurse clinician provides information
to the patient’s family and helps them prepare. During surgery, the nurse clinicians work with the operating
room nurses and serve as contacts between the cardiologists
and surgeons. In
the postoperative phase, surgical nurse clinicians work
with the bedside nurses in the pediatric intensive care
unit and report any changes to family members.
In
the operating room
Operating room (OR) nurses are essential.
They assist the surgeons and coordinate the operating
room tasks performed by the surgical team.
OR nurses are liaisons between the operating room and
the surgical nurse clinicians who update parents on their
child’s status during surgery.
Cardiovascular
intensive care
Immediately following surgery, patients
are taken to the cardiac intensive care unit. Here, nurses
closely monitor the patients’ conditions and watch
for postoperative complications.
They keep the doctors informed of any changes in the patients’
conditions and stay in close contact with the surgical
nurse clinicians to schedule postoperative procedures.
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