Emergency nursing's continuum of cardiac care

Originally published by ENA Connection, the magazine of Emergency Nurses Association

Arrest Development: Emergency Nurses’ Role in Cardiac Resuscitation in the ED Has Evolved

By Shelly Strom, ENA Connection Contributor

The days of cutting open a patient’s chest to treat a heart attack — the preferred method in 1970 — are long gone, as are the days of emergency nurses waiting in the wings while doctors manually pumped hearts back to an animated state.

More and more EDs are embracing nurse-led codes, including emergency cardiac care, and ED nurses have an array of technologies and treatments at their disposal to help them lead life-saving teams.

Such advances could hardly have been conceived in 1970 when ENA was founded. After all, the practice of CPR had only started being used in EDs a decade before. Prior to that, emergency thoracotomy — "cracking the chest" and manually massaging the heart — was the prescribed treatment for cardiac arrest, with almost no alternatives.

See article on ENA’s site. For complete text, please contact me.