Understanding a child's congenital heart defect can be challenging for families. To aid teaching and understanding, the Children's Health℠ CICU team created Bedside Hearts -- a tool that provides illustrations of a child's anatomy before and after their intervention. Results have been encouraging: families now request the illustrations and 70% of surveyed clinicians said that Bedside Hearts helped or changed their practice. 

Learn more about Bedside Hearts.

Background

• The survival rate for congenital heart patients has increased significantly due to advances in cardiac intensive care and cardiac surgery/interventions (Jenkins & Larsen, 2016).
• The CICU team recognized that congenital heart disease (CHD) education at the bedside can be challenging in a high acuity setting. 
• Bedside Hearts was developed to resource clinicians in a fast-paced environment.
• This tool provides an illustration of the patient’s cardiac anatomy before and after intervention.
• The diagrams are utilized to support CHD education for direct care providers and families.
• Per the Nottingham Model, accepted health care practices must be challenged in order to develop innovative skills and knowledge to support and develop pediatric practitioners (Smith, 1995).

Lead By

• Lindsey Daigle, BSN, RN
• Susi Hupp, MD, MSCR
• NaShawn Finley, MBA-HM, BSN, RN, CCRN-K

Objective

Provide a resource diagram tool that is readily available for bedside clinicians to further develop their knowledge of congenital heart defects.

Method

• A RN Team leader was assigned to the project and prepared a diagram for each patient.
• The diagrams are placed at each patient’s bedside and readily available for teaching.
• The project began with a few simpler cardiac defects pre-operatively. 
• The congenital heart diagram is placed at each patient’s bedside upon admission.
• The bedside nurse reviews the diagram and will seek out resources for further clarification.
• We expanded on the project to include post-surgical or post intervention hearts.
• Post-procedure, the diagram is updated with the repair changes.

Results

• The Bedside Heart tool is utilized by clinical staff and has increased real time teaching.
• Families request these diagrams to increase their own knowledge on their child’s defect. Therefore, the diagrams promote family-centered care.
• The RN Team Leader has created a nurse-led work group to support the increase demand for all patients to have bedside heart diagrams.
• A post project survey was conducted. Results demonstrated that 70% of bedside clinicians voiced that bedside hearts helped or changed their practice. (See Figure 1)

Conclusions

• Bedside heart diagrams have improved cardiac defect education and supports direct care providers to confidently teach congenital heart defects that are individualized to each patient.
• Families are intrigued by the visual diagrams and prompted to ask more specific questions about the patient’s anatomy and diagnosis.
• The diagrams follow the patients throughout their hospital stay. Therefore, the educational process is ongoing.
• Bedside Hearts are migrating outside of the CICU to overflow areas such as the NICU.
• Bedside Hearts have promoted individualized treatment plans.

References 

• Illustrations referenced from http://www.chd-diagrams.com
• Jenkins, K., & Larsen, S. H. (2016). Survival after interventional treatment for congenital heart disease improving. Retrieved May 5, 2019. 
• Smith, F. (1995). Children’s nursing in practice: The Nottingham Model. Hoboken, NJ: Wile-Blackwell.