Patient Engagement Tools: Comprehensive Single Ventricle Roadmap
When a family learns their child will be born with a Single Ventricle CHD, they are thrust into a world of uncertainty. It is sure to be a daunting and overwhelming experience. The plan for care of these patients has not typically been clear. As outcomes have improved, providers have been able to imrove their plans of action. In CCHD’s first Patient Engagement Tools Series post, Michelle Steltzer, Nurse Practitioner from Lurie Children’s Chicago, shares their Single Ventricle Roadmap.
Patient Engagement Tools: Comprehensive Single Ventricle Roadmap
Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) impacts about 40,000 newborns a year in the United States. Single ventricle defects are a complex subgroup of CHD, affecting approximately 5 out of every 100,000 newborns. In addition to normal pediatric and adult primary care needs, these patients are impacted by frequent follow up, complex testing, screening, re-interventions, surgeries, consulting providers, and care throughout a lifetime. This care not only impacts the patients, but the entire family system, including siblings, parents, grandparents, and extended family. The Comprehensive Single Ventricle Roadmap is a novel idea stemming from the persistent questions families have brought forward trying to understand the process of single ventricle disease over time and its neurodevelopmental effects.
Speaking from my personal experience as a younger sibling of a single ventricle patient, this kind of guide has been desperately needed for many decades. The first “blue babies” were given options for a better quality of life, and as research and outcomes have improved, these patients are now living into adulthood. Since arriving at Lurie Children’s Hospital in 2016, I am pleased to see the transformation of the idea evolve so promptly into a formal patient engagement strategy (available in English and Spanish) under the guidance of our entire team. I am specifically incredibly grateful to Dr. Kiona Allen and Amelia Aiello who agreed with this vision, making it a reality for patients and families.
Guiding Families Through the Journey
Now that you have been introduced to the roadmap, imagine yourself learning about the diagnosis of single ventricle CHD prenatally. The typical excitement and thrill of learning you are on a road to being a parent of a healthy new baby is not the same joy for parents and families faced with an incurable single ventricle disease. The stops along that road and the topics you’ll discuss are critical, important, costly, and personal. The unknowns, outcomes, and trajectory of this road trip are overwhelming to comprehend. Emotions and fears are often high, breaking down the normal anticipatory excitement and joy.
The Comprehensive Single Ventricle Roadmap is not a pathway any parent eagerly seeks out; yet, it is essential to living life with single ventricle disease. It requires thoughtful planning in an already busy family life schedule to organize the daily care that must be performed seamlessly within the diagnosis and treatment of single ventricle disease. This population is only several decades old; thus, the unknowns within single ventricle care are many. Investigating the latest research outcomes is an essential part of the journey — this includes understanding and coping with the lack of care options. Medical science and care have often not evolved fast enough to benefit children with single ventricle disease. Discussions with families about the surgical and other milestones on the journey are not easy conversations. The unique framework of the roadmap provides a visual guide, allowing families a way to understand the disease process. It also allows for valuable transparent discussions about opportunities for positive coping, hope, and fostering resilience along individual family’s pathway.
The Roadmap is not a “cookie cutter” framework meant to fit every family’s story completely; no two patients (and families) will have the same journey. However, it helps families visualize and more fully understand what care throughout a lifetime looks like, and allows families to anticipate major milestones in a specific time span of a child’s life, such as the newborn surgery. Identifying this point in time allows for transitional discussions regarding navigation in and out of acute and chronic care. These conversations often raise questions about the acute issues currently present for the patient and allow opportunities to explain our other patient engagement tools. For more helpful tools follow: https://www.luriechildrens.org/en-us/care-services/specialties-services/heart-center/programs/single-ventricle-center-excellence/Pages/home-monitoring-program.aspx
Typical questions from families during the newborn surgery period include:
- How will I be able to care for my newborn after surgery?
- What is home surveillance monitoring and will I be able to breastfeed?
- What if I need to go to the ER or another health care provider?
- What does follow up look like in the HeArT clinic (High Acuity Transition Clinic) and the pre-Glenn visit?
Not all stop points are anticipated. A couple examples of unplanned cardiac triggers across a lifespan include a 12-month-old s/p Glenn with moderate to severe AV valve regurgitation failing to thrive on medical therapy. Because of the cardiac issues, this patient moves into the blue circle entitled additional procedures. This may include potential re-operation for valve concerns before the anticipated next surgery in the journey, the Fontan operation. A second example is a 15-year-old s/p Fontan with arrhythmias requiring placement of a pacemaker/AICD that moves into the additional procedures post-Fontan for arrhythmias not responsive to medical management. Lastly, a 40-year-old s/p Fontan with failing function requiring listing for transplant that moves into the additional procedures post-Fontan and in essence trades one disease state for another (single ventricle physiology for transplant).
Striving for Anticipatory Guidance and a Successful Transition to Adult Care
One goal of the roadmap is to provide cardiac anticipatory guidance for families on the normal developmental milestones in life (marked by schoolhouses and graduation caps) and indicates the need for continued cardiac neurodevelopmental screening. The roadmap creates a framework to discuss difficult topics, potential complications, disease trajectory, issues that develop because of single ventricle physiology, and new cardiac concerns. When new issues develop that require attention, we have open conversations with the family that outline goals, medical options, surgical palliation and outcome statistics. Included in the conversation is a diagnosis review utilizing images that are tailored to the child’s individual anatomy to explain the current anatomy and potential next phase of the child’s journey.
The second goal of the Comprehensive Single Ventricle Roadmap is to foster developmentally appropriate health-promoting behaviors as our patients transition to adulthood to enhance the longer term quality of life. In the early-late teen and adult years, decision-making shifts from primarily parent-driven to patient-driven. This can be challenging for all involved. The milestones on the roadmap visually guide patients and families along the valuable process of each child’s maturation, identifies opportunities for transition of care from parents to patients, and highlights ongoing surveillance monitoring of the many consequences of Fontan physiology to achieve the ideal outcome with the best quality of life. This process is individual for each patient and evolves over time. Success is achieved when coordinated, developmentally appropriate, and psychological supportive care creates patients that advocate for themselves in adulthood and maintain the most positive health promoting behaviors in life. To see more on developmental Milestones follow: https://www.luriechildrens.org/en-us/care-services/specialties-services/heart-center/programs/single-ventricle-center-excellence/Documents/developmental-milestones.pdf
Lurie Children’s Hospital has a creative way of facilitating this transition within the Single Ventricle Program. The pediatric single ventricle clinic overlaps monthly with the single ventricle adults being seen in the Adult Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD) program. This allows for collaboration, a slower transition, and a formal hand off of care over time instead of a more rigid fixed timeline. To learn more on our website, follow: https://www.luriechildrens.org/en-us/care-services/specialties-services/heart-center/programs/single-ventricle-center-excellence/Pages/index.aspx
Michelle Steltzer has 20 years of nursing experience in fields from oncology to pediatric cardiology. She received both her bachelor and master’s degrees in nursing from the Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison.
Michelle had a critical role in the development of the first home surveillance monitoring program for pediatric cardiology patients way back in 1999. She then worked collaboratively with the Joint Council on Congenital Heart Disease Quality Initiative while employed in Boston. Michelle expanded feeding protocols within congenital heart disease to include breastfeeding.
In addition to having worked at Boston Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Michelle now works as a pediatric nurse practitioner at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Growing up with a sibling with a CHD, Michelle learned by experience and by watching her mother just what services were lacking for CHD families.