Caring for Patients with Congestive Heart Failure (Podcast)

Approximately 6.7 million Americans over the age of 20 have heart failure, according to the Heart Failure Society of America. Nurses are key members of the caregiving team who help people manage their chronic disease.

Maureen Schaupp, MSN, APRN-CNP began her nursing career at Cleveland Clinic Fairview Hospital in the cardiac intensive care unit, where she often cared for patients with heart failure. When she became a nurse practitioner, Schaupp joined the outpatient heart failure department at Main Campus.

“Working in the outpatient department, I was really able to see the full picture from beginning to end – what it looks like at home and when they come into the hospital – and help them also understand what this continuum of care would look like for them,” says Schaupp, now Executive Director, Associate Chief Nursing Officer for Advanced Practice Nursing and Nursing Quality and Practice at Cleveland Clinic.

In this episode of Cleveland Clinic’s Nurse Essentials podcast, Schaupp discusses nursing care for patients with heart failure, including:

• Common causes of congestive heart failure (CHF)
• Early signs and symptoms of the chronic disease
• The latest guidelines for managing CHF, including the four pillars of medical therapy
• What to expect during inpatient admissions and outpatient care
• How to help prevent readmissions

Click the podcast player above to listen to the episode now, or read on for a short, edited excerpt. Check out more Nurse Essentials episodes at my.clevelandclinic.org/podcasts/nurse-essentials or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast excerpt

Podcast host Carol Pehotsky, DNP, RN, NEA-BC: Knowing that patients [with heart failure] are on their own journey, what are some things that we as nurses can do to hopefully minimize readmission?

Schaupp: I think on the inpatient side, before the patient is discharged, really listening to the patients and their family members or whomever is accompanying them at times during their visit. Helping to identify what their barriers may be to successful care once they leave the hospital. And those can be multiple things. It can be anything from cost to transportation and food insecurity.

Pehotsky: Do you have access to low-sodium food?

Schaupp: Exactly. And low-sodium food oftentimes is more expensive than some of the food that comes higher in sodium, some of the canned goods and things like that. And so kind of just spending time to get to know them, build that trusting relationship first, and then working from there to best understand them and then notifying your other care team members of the things that you're noticing as well. Speak up.

Somebody may come in the room and be like, "OK, we've got this in line and this in line and we're ready to go." But in your head and in your gut, you're like, "Man, I know I talked to him about that yesterday and he told me the car's broke." And so it may or may not be appropriate to say in front of the patient – it depends on the rapport that you've built with them and that sort of thing – but always making sure to speak up and say, "You know what, I'm not quite sure that that's going to work. Do we have another option?" And really being that advocate that we all strive to be for our patient.

A huge part of our role as nurses is advocating for the patient and their well-being. So really letting everybody else on the team know as well, when you see something that might just not be conducive to them coming back in the short term.