Real-Life Communication
You're a cardiovascular surgeon talking to a patient about a possible surgery on a valve in his heart. You explain very carefully what the surgery might entail, and how it will help him.
"If you can't speak well, you can't explain things to your patients, nurses and consulting physicians," says Dr. Tea Acuff, a cardiovascular surgeon.
During your talk with your patient, you discover that he really has no idea how the heart operates. Using your model of the heart, you first explain how the heart pumps blood throughout the body. This is what you tell the patient:
How the Heart Works:
The heart is a pump with four chambers. The upper chambers are called the atria (a single upper chamber is called an atrium). The lower two are called the ventricles.
Valves between the upper and lower chambers stop blood from flowing backwards when the heart beats. Likewise, valves between the heart's lower chambers and the blood vessels that emerge from them prevent blood from flowing backwards when the heart beats.
The right two chambers of the heart (right atrium and right ventricle) pump blood from the heart to the lungs, so blood cells can pick up a fresh load of oxygen in exchange for the waste gases they've collected during their trip around the body. The freshly oxygenated blood returns to the left chambers of the heart (left atrium and left ventricle), which then pump it around the rest of the body.
As the heart muscle relaxes, the two top chambers (the atria) fill with blood. Then, these chambers contract, squeezing blood down into the ventricles. A moment later, the ventricles contract, sending blood flowing out of the heart either to the lungs or through the body.
(Copyright 2002 The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. All rights reserved. Used with permission.)
You stop frequently during your explanation and ask if the patient has any questions. So far, he has a few.
- What are the names of the top and bottom chambers of the heart?
- What is the function of the valves between the upper and lower chambers of the heart?
- Why do the right two chambers of the heart pump blood to the lungs?
How do you answer your patient?