Heart Failure

Heart Failure: A Clinical Nursing Handbook provides a much-needed introductory text to heart failure for students and nurses new to the area as well as an invaluable source of information in daily clinical practice for more experienced nurses, who are regularly seeing patients with heart failure. Caring for people with heart failure is challenging and with the numbers of patients increasing every year, healthcare professionals are under pressure to provide appropriate, clinically and cost effective heart failure services. Heart Failure: A Clinical Nursing Handbook offers practical information that considers concerns raised by patients, questions asked by student nurses and clinical issues that arise frequently. The introduction examines the epidemiology, physiology, causes and outcomes of heart failure, whilst continuing chapters explore: Diagnosis and assessment: past medical history, the role of clinical assessment, medication reviews and the use of investigations. Treatment: the impact of education and lifestyle, exercise physiology, the role of medicines and invasive procedures and end stage heart failure. Policy and service issues: the historical perspective, specialist services, funding and patient participation and caseload management. Also discussed is the setting up and running of a heart failure service – the processes, documents, staffing, costs, data handling and business case issues that need to be understood. Practical techniques and tips to support patient understanding, minimise adverse events and treat side effects are also given to help the reader in their practice. This concise handbook is ideal for clinicians caring for patients with heart failure, pre-registration nursing students, qualified nurses on cardiology courses and community matrons undertaking advanced practise courses. This book provides a complete, easy-to-use handbook for nurses who see patients with heart failure. In recent years heart failure has become a high priority in health care. With more nurses caring for patients with heart failure and making decisions that are often complex, there is a clear need for those nurses to have access to good quality clinical information and guidance. This book is designed to be a practical, ‘one-stop’, handbook for the practitioner, supported by case studies and up-todate references throughout, providing all the topics the Practitioner or student may need in their work with patients with heart failure.