Nursing 492 – Healthy People 2020: Heart Failure

Purpose of Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to involve students in the comprehensive community needs assessment. Students will develop/utilize tools to identify perceived factors (both negative and positive) that impinge on the population’s health. This information will then be used to develop and implement strategies for health promotion. Topics have been identified from Healthy People 2020 Objectives. Presentations should be developed around one objective from the Healthy People 2020 focus areas.

Approach to Assignment

This was one of the first group assignments I had to complete for this program. To approach the assignment, I started by volunteering to be group leader. As a group of 7, we then agreed on a topic that was relevant to all of our personal practices and also represented one of the healthy people 2020 goals: heart failure. We divided up the research and then compared data. We then decided to create a PowerPoint in addition to our paper to support our research. In this particular group assignment, everyone worked very well together and participated.

Reason for Inclusion

I included this assignment in my portfolio to demonstrate my ability to work well with a group. I also wanted to demonstrate my leadership skills seeing as I acted as group leader for this project. I felt that this assignment represented my ability to not only perform research and compile a group paper but to also use alternative media, such as PowerPoint, to convey information.

Curricular outcomes

Critical thinking

Revises actions and goals based on evidence rather than conjecture.

In this project, my group and I researched several different prevention and health promotion techniques to prevent the progression of heart failure in our nation. The research sources that we used to pull our data and statistics from were all peer reviewed, professional and scholarly resources. We based our Health People 2020 goals and interventions on the evidence found in these resources.

Engages in creative problem solving.

My group was faced with solving the problem of the rising number of patients with heart failure in the Three Rivers District. To try and come up with some solutions for this problem, we had to work together and share creative ideas. Some of the ideas we came up with included promoting local support groups, local events (such as heart walks and stress management seminars), online support resources and even educational events for school children (such as hoops for hearts or jump rope for the heart).

Nursing Practice

Applies appropriate knowledge of major health problems to guide nursing practice.

The major health problem discussed in this project is heart failure. As a cardiac nurse, this is a problem that I am faced with each and every day. It is the most common reason that patient’s come to the cardiac unit aside from acute MIs. I apply my clinical knowledge of heart failure to this project. As group leader, I was able to share my experiences with heart failure patients with the group so that we could create a thorough research paper on ways to prevent heart failure in the future. My knowledge of heart failure helped guide us in this project.

Implements traditional nursing care practices as appropriate to provide holistic health care to diverse populations across the lifespan.

Some of the traditional nursing care practices we implement to help prevent CHF in this project include extensive education to adults and children as well as emotional support. The basis of our prevention for CHF is education. If we can begin education about the prevention of heart failure by implementing programs like hoops for hearts and teaching kids about the dangers of smoking, then hopefully these children will continue to live healthy lives into adulthood. This allows us to provide more holistic care and education across the lifespan.

Demonstrates an awareness of complementary modalities and their usefulness in promoting health.

A few of the complementary modalities discussed to prevent CHF in this project include stress management classes and support groups, yoga and good nutrition. While these are not “medical” interventions, they have proven to be very useful in preventing heart disease. We discuss how decreasing stress in your life as eating a balanced diet have very positive effects on the well-being of your heart.

Establishes and/or utilizes outcome measures to evaluate the effectiveness of care.

The outcome measures we utilized for this project were the Healthy People 2020 objectives. These objectives were to reduce the portion of persons in the population with hypertension, to increase overall cardiovascular health in the U.S. population and to increase the number of community based organizations providing education and support on the topics of tobacco use, nutrition and physical activity in regards to the prevention of CHF. These outcome measures were the basis of our interventions and were utilized to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions we provided.

Communication

Expresses oneself and communicates effectively with diverse groups and disciplines using a variety of media in a variety of contexts.

I was able to express myself effectively through my writing to my instructor and peers through this project. To complete this project, I had to communicate effectively within a group of 7 via blackboard and email. I used a variety of media including paper writing, PowerPoint, online communication and research on the internet to enhance the communication of my ideas to my instructor and peers.

Produces clear, accurate and relevant writing using correct grammar, spelling and punctuation.

My group received an A on this project in Nursing 492. My group received full credit for the grammar, spelling and punctuation portion of the rubric and we were able to effectively communicate our thoughts through our writing to our ODU professor.

Accesses and utilizes data and information from a wide range of sources to enhance patient and professional communication.

We used six different sources for our research for this paper and PowerPoint. These references included research articles, journal entries and the national Healthy People 2020 objectives. I was able to use these references to enhance my portion of the paper and create several different options for preventing CHF and promoting health in general. These references allowed me to express my thoughts in a clear and direct manner to my instructor and peers.

Teaching

Provides teaching to patients and/or professionals about health care procedures and technologies in preparation for and following nursing or medical interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to educate other healthcare professionals about nursing and medical interventions that can aid in the prevention of heart failure and assist in healthcare promotion. The PowerPoint we created is meant to share our research findings about the seriousness of the heart failure epidemic with other health care professionals as well as patients.

Provides relevant and sensitive health education information and counseling to patients and families in a variety of situations and settings.

My group and I provided several different health education and counseling opportunities for patients in this paper. Some of these resources included smoking cessation groups and classes, stress management classes, yoga and nutrition courses, the Riverside CABG support group and so on. These support groups and informational courses offer patients and families a wide range of educational opportunities.

Uses information technologies and other appropriate methods to communicate health promotion, risk reduction and disease prevention across the life span.

We used the internet to complete our research for this project and then PowerPoint to communicate the community resources that we found to our peers, instructors and patients. These information technologies allowed us to promote health promotion and CHF risk reduction across the lifespan.

Uses information technologies and other appropriate methods to enhance one’s own knowledge base.

By using the internet and each other as resources for this paper, we were able to expand our own knowledge bases about heart failure risk reduction. By creating an informative essay as well as an educational PowerPoint, we used information technologies to enhance our own knowledge bases.

Research

Differentiates between descriptive nursing literature and published reports of nursing research.

To complete the research necessary for this paper, we had to weed out the non-reliable sources. While using Google, we found several articles that nurses had written about CHF prevention; however, these articles were simply their personal opinions rather than research based studies. I had to use my research skills to weed out these non-reliable sources so that I could focus on only research-based articles and studies for my portion of the paper and presentation.

Applies research-based knowledge from the arts, humanities and sciences to complement nursing practice.

I have personal experience with requiring stress management. I work full time, have a second part time job, go to school online part time, I am currently planning my wedding, currently moving into a new home and also run a children’s theatre voluntarily. My plate is always full and, therefore, I have to use stress management methods to be successful in my everyday life. I take a yoga class 1-3 times a week to manage my stress. I was able to use my knowledge of the health benefits of yoga from personal experience as well as from a research base to complement the nursing practice of stress management education for this paper.

Evaluates research that focuses on the efficacy and effectiveness of nursing interventions.

My group had to evaluate research that focused on the effectiveness of nursing interventions in the prevention of heart failure and the promotion of wellness. We looked at the current nursing interventions in place and compared the statistics of the number of patients in the nation with CHF to these interventions. We then researched new and upcoming interventions and compared their projected statistics with the current statistics in order to choose which interventions we believed had the most potential to decrease the national number of patients with CHF.

Shares research findings with colleagues.

I shared my research findings with the other members of my group throughout this entire project creation process. We then all shared our research findings with our professor and colleagues by creating the PowerPoint presentation.

Leadership

Assumes a leadership role within one’s scope of practice as a designer, manager and coordinator of health care to meet the special needs of vulnerable populations in a variety of practice settings.

I was the group leader for this entire project. This allowed me to be both the overall designer and manager of the project. I was able to coordinate with my group to create the most informative paper and PowerPoint to satisfy the needs of the vulnerable population: patient’s with or at risk for CHF.

Initiates community partnerships to establish health promotion goals and implements strategies to meet those goals.

Some of the community partnerships we discussed in this paper that can be utilizes to meet the Healthy People 2020 goals include the Riverside post CABG support groups, stress management support groups, smoking cessation support groups and several different community yoga classes. We discussed implementing many different partnership strategies to meet the Healthy People 2020 goals including traveling to local schools to perform education about CHF prevention via programs such as hoops for hearts and jump rope for the heart.

Professionalism

Differentiates between general, institutional and specialty-specific standards of practice to guide nursing care.

In this paper, my group discusses the general standards of practice to guide the nursing care of patients with or at risk for heart failure. These standards include smoking cessation education, frequent blood pressure checks, stress management and daily weight monitoring. While these are standards across the board, some of the institutional standards at my place of work include mandatory daily I&Os for all CHF patients, ensuring that every CHF patient is discharged with a free standing scale to use at home as well as a log for daily weights and auditing the number of CHF patients that become readmitting within 30 days of discharge for the same problem. Overall, our paper focuses on the specialty-specific standards of practice to guide nursing care by using the Healthy People 2020 cardiac health goals as our guide. These standards are meant to be nationwide for all cardiac specific patients at risk for or living with CHF.

Culture

Maintains an awareness of global environmental factors that may influence the delivery of healthcare services.

One of the goals we discuss in this paper is to prevent CHF by closely monitoring the blood pressures of at risk patients. We acknowledge that this can prove to be difficult seeing as not everyone has access to a blood pressure machine. We also acknowledge that not everyone knows how to read a blood pressure cuff or understands what the numbers actually mean. This can be due to a lack of medical education, literary status or perhaps even economical status (i.e. can’t afford a blood pressure cuff/blood pressure medicine/etc). These factors may influence the ability to deliver appropriate healthcare to all patient populations.

Healthy People 2020 - Heart Failure

Healthy People 2020 Power Point