The blood flow through the heart can be difficult to understand in nursing school. As a nursing student, you need to know the heart blood flow, along with the heart anatomy, like the tricuspid valve, the pulmonic valve, the bicuspid valve, the aortic valve, and the left and right atria and ventricles.
In this video, we’ll talk about the pathway of blood through the heart, and how it travels through each of these heart valves.
If you’ve struggled with understanding the blood flow of the heart, this video is for YOU! 🙂
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
In this video we are going to walk through the pathway of blood flow through the heart.
Hey there friend, my name is Christina Rafano from nursingsos.com and in this video I am going to walk you through how the blood moves through the heart and the body, step-by-step. So we’re going to break it all down super easy for you and I’ll give you a lot of memory tricks to help you remember it for nursing school. So if you like these memory tricks, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell because you don’t ever want to miss a video with even more nursing school tips.
Alright, so let’s take a look at the heart.
The heart is divided up into four main chambers: the right atrium, the right ventricle, the left atrium, and the left ventricle.
The right side of the heart pumps blood to the lungs and the left side of the heart pumps blood to the rest of the body. Now to help you remember this, think Right for Respiratory, R and R, and Left as in L, for LITERALLY, ALL the other things. So that’s how I like to remember which side of the heart pumps where, think right for respiratory, and left for ALL other parts of the body.
And when you think of the heart chambers, you have the 2 atria and the 2 ventricles. The atria are ontop of the ventricles, so think A comes before V, so the Atria are ontop of the Ventricles.
You’ve also got a few valves here as well. The tricuspid valve, the pulmonic valve, the bicuspid or mitral valve and the aortic valve. Now, the 2 valves that students get confused with the most are the tricuspid valve and the bicuspid valve (Wich is also called the mitral valve). So there are a few ways to remember this. The tricuspid valve is on the right side of the heart. So think that you always “tri” to do the right thing. So the tricuspid valve is on the right side of the heart, so you try to do right. And the tricuspid valve comes before the bicuspid valve. So for this one you can either think “try before you buy” or you ride a “tricycle before a bicycle.” So tricuspid comes before bicuspid.
And the last thing you need to know before we dive in is that arteries carry blood AWAY from the heart, and veins carry blood TOO the heart. Now, the blood flow loses pressure as it moves through the body, so the veins have valves that keep the blood from backflowing. So in order to remember all of this, I like to think that Arteries move blood AWAY from the heart, and Veins have VALVES to keep blood moving to the heart. So arteries = away, and veins = valves.
Alrighty, so let’s draw this out.
We’ll start in the right atrium, where the blood just came in from the rest of the body and has given away all of it’s oxygen and is now what we call deoxygenated blood, so it doesn’t have oxygen.
This deoxygenated blood flows from the body via the inferior and superior vena canva and from the coronary veins through the coronary sinus and gets dumped into the right atrium.
So blood moves from the right atrium, through the tricuspid valve, and into the right ventricle.
From the right ventricle, it moves through the pulmonic valve, into the pulmonary arteries (pulmonic as in pulmonary) and into the lungs. So think pulmonary for the lungs.
The lungs then do their job of gas exchange and put more oxygen into the blood, making it oxygenated. So the blood now has oxygen in it, so it is oxygenated blood.
Then from the lungs, the blood moves into the pulmonary veins, and we know veins go to the heart, and the blood moves into the left atrium, moves through the bicuspid valve (aka the mitral valve)and into the left ventricle.
From the left ventricle, it moves through the aortic valve and into the aorta and then out to the rest of the body. Now obviously, you can think aortic valve for aorta, so that’s easy to remember.
And that is the pathway of blood flow through the heart!
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Thank you so much for watching, friend, now go become the nurse that God created only YOU to be. I’ll see you right back here next time on the nursing school show. Take care.
Thanks for being all around amazing, my friend! Now go become the nurse that God created ONLY YOU to be. 🙂
