CREATING CLINICAL RESOURCES TO SUPPORT NURSE PRACTITIONER CLINICAL PRACTICE

Abstract

British Columbia’s (BC) Heart Failure (HF) Strategy was established in 2010 with defined funding and leadership from Cardiac Services BC (CSBC). One of the mandates focused on ensuring health care providers had tools and resources to guide their HF practice. With the release of a new heart failure medication, Ivabradine- CSBC pulled together HF experts to review the current recommendation from the Shift trial and Health Canada. There was an identified need to establish practice resources that could support NP practice and be easily integrated into the Nurse Practitioners’ (NP) workflow. The practice resource development was led by CSBC’s HF clinical leads with extensive input from NPs specializing in HF. Based on feedback from multiple HF practitioner’s provincial prescribing resources and patient education resources were created. All of the resources are intended to assist NP’s decision making when initiating, titrating and educating patients regarding the new HF medication, Ivabradine. In this session, the BC HF Strategy will be briefly described with a focus on the development of the HF NP practice resources. The evidence informed foundation of the resources and the engagement strategy to ensure the resources met the NP’s practice needs will be reviewed. The resources will be highlighted and shared; including an overview on how to access them on BC HF website. Lastly, feedback from the NPs regarding the utility of the resources will be discussed, with an emphasis on the implications for improving NP practice and patient care.