Heart Failure: Approach To Care

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APPROACH TO CARE:
People are human beings with their own values, beliefs and cultural practices. Therefore, as an individual, a patient with heart failure should be provided ethical, safe, and professional care. In this regard, the ethical principle of justice, autonomy and respect for a person, fairness, kindness and the principle of no harm should be appreciated. Regarding justice, nursing interventions ought to be planned and implemented per the demands for care for which the illness calls. The heart provides for the most basic need for life, delivering oxygen to the body to sustain life. Therefore, it is rationally acceptable to prioritize, providing the care to a patient with heart failure, to meet the most crucial need. However, …show more content…

If you have diabetes or high blood pressure, work with your health care team to control these conditions. Have your blood sugar level and blood pressure checked. Talk with your doctor about when you should have tests and how often to take measurements at home. Try to avoid respiratory infections like the flu and pneumonia. Talk with your doctor or nurse about getting flu and pneumonia vaccines.
(13) Educate the client about worsening of heart failure, lifestyle changes and medicines may no longer control your symptoms. A medical procedure or surgery may be necessary at this point.
In heart failure, the right and left sides of the heart may no longer contract at the same time. This disrupts the heart’s pumping. To correct this problem, a cardiac resynchronization therapy device may need to be placed near your heart. This device helps both sides of your heart contract at the same time, which can decrease heart failure symptoms.
(14) Some people have tachycardia, and if not controlled, sudden cardiac arrest could occur. Irregular heartbeats can cause sudden cardiac arrest. An ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) could possibly have to be placed. An ICD checks your heart rate and uses electrical pulses to correct irregular heart …show more content…

This way your patient will have time to absorb the information ask questions. By starting early on with discharge planning, you will have time to see if the patient understands and have time to reinforce what they don’t. Using an interdisciplinary approach will allow her more time to interact with different members of the medical team.
Weight Monitoring – Patients are weighed every day in the hospital on the same scale. Make sure they have a scale at home and stress the importance of daily weights on the same scale. They need to weight at the same time every day, before eating and after emptying the bladder Try and wear the same clothes and report a weight gain of more than 3 pounds in one day or 5 pounds a week (or as prescribed by physician). Let he/she know that daily monitoring helps the physical know whether the diuretics are working or not.
Medications – Make sure that the patient has any changes that were made at the hospital as far as their medications. While taking a diuretic, the patient often thinks that they can adjust their own dose. Let the know that when taking diuretics, their lab values are monitored, Specific changes can cause a drastic change in the heart rate and

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