Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 December 2017
Over the past decades, survival of patients with CHD improved significantly, making it a life-cycle disease. Hence, there is a need for a workforce that can take up the care for afflicted individuals in the different phases of the life spectrum. Each life phase is associated with specific challenges. Topics that should receive more attention in clinical care or in CHD research are parenting styles of parents of children, transfer and transition of adolescents, cumulative burden of injury in the brain in adults, and geriatric care for older persons with CHD. Nurses, along with other healthcare professionals, will play a pivotal role in building up expertise in these areas and taking up these challenges.
Presented at the 2017 Seventh World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology & Cardiac Surgery (WCPCCS 2017), Barcelona, Spain, 16–21 July, 2017. Presented Friday, 21 July, 2017.