Cardiac rehabilitation is a broad branch of medicine related to the recovery of people with various heart diseases. This area is focused on improving the condition of patients by following a set of multiple exercises (“What is cardiac rehabilitation?” 2016). The course of cardiac rehabilitation is essential to ensure the quality and full life of people with heart diseases, so I chose this direction in my practice.
However, there is one noteworthy program that aims to facilitate the recovery process for patients. It is called the high-intensity fast-track stroke rehabilitation program (or Fast Track) and was developed at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (Tam et al., 2018). Two main reasons led to the development of the system. First, there is the problem of slow service for patients who are going through intensive recovery therapy. If there are 50 beds in a hospital, and each of them has a patient with a stroke, then slow patient care is inevitable, and the process can last up to 6 weeks (Tang). Therefore, it is proposed to create an outpatient rehabilitation program of high intensity, which will allow freeing hospital beds and speed up the time of treatment.
The second significant factor is the price of these rehabilitation courses, which can be quite substantial. However, the proposed Fast Track program can significantly reduce treatment costs. According to studies, incremental cost-effectiveness ratios for patients who are transitioning to a new system from the old method of inpatient rehabilitation amounted to approximately $ 404 for inpatient day saved (Tam et al., 2018). Thus, Fast Track shows itself to be an exceptionally effective system for the rehabilitation of people with heart diseases. Therefore, all patients with similar conditions become the target audience of the program, including those who could not afford expensive treatment before.
Since any cardiac rehabilitation is a group work of a large number of people, nurses also take part in this process. However, the program is still under development and requires further research. First of all, it is necessary to study the real economic effects of therein program, and this is an area in which nurses can actively participate. Although the methodology has been beneficial from a medical point of view, its advantage as a system is not so distinct, since the team responsible for developing Fast Track used only coefficients (Tang). Thus, nurses can contribute to development by collecting statistics directly from patients. Since the nursing staff works with a vast number of people, they have the opportunity to receive information from them. As an example, two teams of nurses can focus on examining patient costs for routine inpatient care and Fast Track treatment. After such an examination, it will be possible to conduct a comparative analysis and using examples to establish the actual economic efficiency of the program accurately.
Following this, receiving information from patients, nurses may act as advocates for them, determining whether the method is suitable for them or not. Nurses are closest to the patients, so it is most convenient for them to determine how much the program matches their financial situation. They can act as mediators between doctors and patients, providing feedback that can influence the further development of the system. Thus, nurses can monitor the advancement and implementation of the system at the forefront. Following their observations, they can submit timely reports on the development of the program, thereby affecting its design.
In the same way that nurses can observe the progress, they can also follow the implementation of the system. Moreover, because of the nature of the program, nurses have more influence in implementing Fast Track than in developing this technique. The role of the nurse is to convey information about the new treatment to patients, to explain its benefits, as well as to perform rehabilitation treatment on an outpatient basis directly. Thus, nurses can do much more with the implementation of this program than with its advancement, since they are in constant contact with patients. No matter how the Fast Track program changes during its formation, the role of nurses will change very little. First, they remain responsible for the implementation of treatment for the patient. Second, the program does not change the process of rehabilitation itself so much as it changes its order, unloading hospitals and transferring part of the workload to outpatient treatment.
Nevertheless, in my opinion, this system is useful and beneficial not only to patients but also to the members of the healthcare team, i.e., doctors, nurses, and physician assistants. The introduction of the Fast Track practice will make it possible to remove part of the load from hospitals and, accordingly, from staff. On the one hand, reducing the burden means more comfortable working conditions that lead to better treatment so that in the end, the situation is beneficial for both doctors and patients. On the other hand, because of an increase in the intensity of outpatient treatment outside the hospital, the burden on personnel operating outside the walls will increase. However, this does not mean that the volume of work will grow as well since the number of patients remains the same. Thus, I can conclude that the Fast Track program is beneficial both for patients who save on their treatment and for members of the healthcare team, especially doctors.
References
Tam, A., Mac, S., Isaranuwatchai, W., & Bayley, M. (2018). Cost-effectiveness of a high-intensity rapid access outpatient stroke rehabilitation program. International Journal of Rehabilitation Research, 42(1), 56-62. Web.
Tang, C. (n.d.). Fast track rehab.University Health Network. Web.
What is cardiac rehabilitation?(2016). American Heart Association. Web.