2021 Annual Conference

Interprofessional Collaboration

Two Cardiac Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) in a two-community hospital system took on the challenge of changing the process for ordering and managing Wearable Defibrillators (WD) for the inpatient population.  Left ventricular dysfunction, or cardiomyopathy, is one of the most frequent causes of SCD.  Treatments for cardiomyopathy include an implantable defibrillator, however, not all patients immediately qualify, and therefore, WD is often prescribed for up to a period of ninety days.  By allowing patients to keep their WD on when admitted, it decreases the time to defibrillation, compared to traditional defibrillation, should it be needed.  In order to have successful implementation of the new processes, changes were made to the electronic medical record, WD order set, and reports were established.  Additionally, online and hands on learning were developed.  During the change process we found that the number of patients with WDs were much higher than previously known.  The CNSs were able to easily identify patients requiring WDs and were able to positively impact their plan of care.