Our Nurse of the Week is Wendy Hart, a recent Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) graduate in the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing at the University of Arkansas (U of A), who used a $500 grant to purchase equipment for patients with heart failure issues.
Hart received the grant money as part of her final doctoral project where she worked with a dozen local patients at Northwest Medical Center’s Heart Care center in Springdale, AR. The equipment Hart purchased for her study included weight scales and blood pressure cuffs for each of the patients who participated.
Hart has been a registered nurse at Northwest Medical Center for 13 years, with a primary focus on cardiovascular disease. She’s currently an emergency department registered nurse. Hart continued to work while earning her DNP at U of A and graduated with her fellow College of Education and Health Professions students on May 11.
Her final DNP project focused on implementing a quality improvement project in the healthcare field of her choice. She worked with Dr. Michael Green at Northwest Medical Center.
Hart tells news.uark.edu, “I have always been passionate about patients in the heart failure population. The goal of this project was to improve self-care management and decrease unnecessary hospital readmissions. Heart failure patients require a lot of management and continuous communication with a provider to assure that they are maintaining their baseline well-being.”
The main objectives for maintaining overall well-being include daily weight, fluid and salt management, and early recognition of worsening symptoms. Hart recognized that access to the right equipment was a major barrier for her participants and she wanted to assure that each patient was given the best chance for success. She reached out to the American Heart Association local branch to see if they would assist her, which led to the grant that allowed her to purchase 12 bathroom scales and 10 blood pressure cuffs.
To learn more about Wendy Hart, a recent DNP graduate from the University of Arkansas, who used a $500 grant to purchase equipment for patients with heart failure issues, visit here.
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