Heart failure

Heart Failure in Older Adults Heart failure (HF) is a preventable, complex, and progressive disease that affects most older adults. The enormous personal and national financial burden of HF is astounding. HF has become a global epidemic affecting over 23 million people worldwide with economic burden estimated at more than $108 billion per year (Dickson et al., 2014). This condition is predominant in adults older than 65, and is a chronic and progressive syndrome often associated with the…

appropriately assessing patients over the telephone and how it can be challenging. I was a part of a telemonitoring program for congestive heart failure patients and what I learned from that experience is that history taking is CRITICAL. We developed a telephone assessment protocol that would assist the nurse in asking all the pertinent questions regarding heart failure exacerbation in addition other key points to address. However, as the supervisor over the program, I one my challenges was…

difference in patients’ lives as well as helping to reduce the overall cost for the health care organization. The statistics were well researched and the purpose of the paper was clearly stated. Prior to reading this paper I was unaware that congestive heart failure (CHF) was the number one cause of readmission to the hospital and was associated with such astounding costs. The ideas outlined in Kristen’s plan of action sound like objectives that could be implemented not only for the CHF…

Reduce Heart Failure Readmissions and Improve Patient Outcomes through Transitional Care "Heart failure (HF) affects about five million people in the United States, with 550,000 new patients diagnosed each year” (Hines, Yu & Randall, 2010 ). "It 's the leading cause of hospitalization and healthcare costs in the United States and up to 25% of patients hospitalized with (HF) are readmitted within 30 days” (Feltner, et al, 2014). Heart failure is a chronic and progressive condition and patients…

shoulders but I was determined to be strong for my family, and to make my father proud. It was hard but I believe the ability to keep my head up kept me from falling apart. For the last three years of my father’s life, he suffered from congestive heart failure disease. After his death, I could not decipher my emotions, I did not know if I was angry or sad. Angry because in some strange way I felt my father put his head down, and he disregarded his own life philosophy. However, I quickly…

We are currently being certified to be a provider for patients with heart failure. Under the American Association of Heart Failure Nurses, their mission is “to unites professionals, patients and caregivers in the support and advancement of heart failure practice, education and research, thus promoting optimal patient outcomes. As for their vision statement, “to be the foremost nursing association across the heart failure continuum” (AAHFN, 2017). Our hospital mostly treats patients with…

The readmissions program, created under the Affordable Care Act, initially evaluated how often patients treated for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia had to return to the hospital within 30 days of discharge. For fiscal 2015 the CMS added treatment for two conditions—chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and total hip and total knee replacements—and the penalty rose to 3%. The CMS data from January to December 2016 revealed that Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia had higher…

Mr. G is a patient that has been hospitalized for an exacerbation of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) twice in the last two months. He is not complying with his medication regimen, dietary restrictions or doctor visits. Clients with CHF have potentially reversible causes including, a poor understanding of CHF, poor compliance with medication and diet, poorly controlled hypertension, inadequate discharge planning and follow up care (Palmer, Appleton and Rodrigues, p. 694). The patient will be…

Heart failure is a complicated syndrome characterised by reduced heart productivity and subsequent haemodynamic and neurohormonal responses (Poole-Wilson 1985). Dilated cardiomyopathy is the most common pattern of congestive cardiac failure in older people (Nicholson, 2014). Congestive cardiac failure can be caused by a number of pathological conditions, some of these conditions can be reversed through medications and natural remedies but others may not be (Nicholson, 2014). Patients can have…

A major symptom of heart disease is exercise intolerance, which is thought to be caused by overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) via limb edema stimulating group III/IV afferent feedback mechanisms (Figure 1) (7, 8 & 9). Accurately replicating the afferent feedback during exercise is difficult in both healthy and diseased subjects, due to an inability to directly measure afferents in human subjects. Thus most information about the response of afferents comes from post-exercise…