Caring for patients with failing hearts

Getting her patients back home and into the community safely is one of Janelle McLean’s goals working as a Mechanical Circulatory Support Coordinator at The Alfred.

Janelle’s role is to look after patients with failing hearts. When they are placed with a ventricular assist device (VAD), a device used to help circulate the blood to the rest of the body, their lives are ultimately changed forever.

It’s Janelle’s job to think about how they can bring a bit of normalcy back into their patient’s new lives.

“We meet these patients in a crisis state and really the worst time in their lives. They are usually very vulnerable, stressed, and extremely sick,” she says.

“We need to think outside the box to improve our patients’ quality of life. We want them to get back to studying, working, and doing normal things with their family.”

When her patients are nearly ready to go home, she can see how far they’ve come to when they first arrived under her care.

“You can see it in their face when they’ve finally been able to walk for the first time,” says Janelle.

Janelle encourages other nurses to think about the opportunities in a role like hers.

“This role also has a lot to do with innovation, new guidelines, policies, research, there is a lot of scope to your practice that keeps it interesting, challenging and creative”.