Aortic Specialist Nurses
Our patients love Aortic Specialist Nurses. They make a massive difference to life-long patient care in Aortic Dissection. Every specialist Aortic centre should have one, or preferably two...
21st-century Aortovascular medicine is creating a patient population the NHS has never had before - Aortic Dissection survivors. The challenge facing clinicians and commissioners is to work out how best to care for these patients for the rest of their lives.
Aortic dissection is a complex disease, requiring life-long surveillance, management of multiple co-morbidities and potentially, future interventions. Patients' family members are also at risk and need to be assessed through screening (imaging + genetics), which may lead to them requiring life-long surveillance and possibly treatment to prevent aortic dissection. Aortic Specialist Nurses play a key role in supporting these patients and their families. In recent years we have seen the leading specialist Aortic centres appoint one or two experienced cardiac nurses to the role of Aortic Specialist Nurse and empower them to run nurse-led Aortic clinics. Some centres are also involving their Aortic Specialist Nurses in remote monitoring of patients in a virtual ward.
The national patient charity strongly supports and encourages the appointment of Aortic Specialist Nurses to meet the long-term needs of families affected by aortic dissection in the future NHS.
Read this article in the British Journal of Cardiac Nursing by Emma Hope, an Aortic Specialist Nurse at Southampton, which provides more detail about the role of the Aortic Specialist Nurse and its value to patients.