With the team effort described in this article, the nurses were successful in providing safe and quality care to patients with advanced heart failure.

Traditionally, patients who require hemodynamic monitoring with a pulmonary artery catheter (PAC) have been cared for in critical care environments. Patients with a PAC are often more acutely ill than other patients, requiring multiple interventions such as increased monitoring of pulmonary artery pressures, changing medication infusion rates on the basis of those pressures, assessments of the results of such changes, and monitoring for potential complications of the PAC.

A registered nurse must be competent in working with PACs, understanding the purpose of PACs, their waveforms, their complications, and the implications of treatments in order to provide the higher level of monitoring that these patients require. Additionally, higher nurse to patient ratios are needed to support the intensive monitoring needs of these patients.

With an estimated 550000...

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