Free Cardiac CE Webinars Continue Thursday!

On Thursday, June 25 at 12PM Eastern, we are excited to bring you the second in our series of free cardiac CE webinars! This webinar will be a live-streamed, remote expert panel discussion on 'the New Normal' in cardiac care following COVID-19 fallout, with our experts taking a more speculative look into the near and distant future.

Our panel features our truly outstanding line-up of non-physician administrators at the top of the field of cardiovascular care as well as the fantastic Dr. Seth Bilazarian, MD, Vice President of Clinical Education and Training at Abiomed.

Dr. Seth Bilazarian joined Abiomed in 2015 and leads the Medical Office’s Clinical Education and Training Programs in its mission to recover hearts and save lives, using the Impella platform of devices. He practiced clinical and interventional cardiology in the cath lab for 23 years before joining Abiomed where he collaborates with interventional cardiology and heart failure specialists to develop best practices for use of the Impella platform in Protected PCI and Cardiogenic Shock, and physician investigators in pre-clinical and clinical research in ventricular unloading.

Access instructions for our free cardiac CE webinars:

We're streaming the webinar, live, on YouTube! Anyone can access the webinar on Thursday at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmhSysWnI-A

As we'll be on YouTube, you'll be able to view the webinar on your phone, desktop, or even your Smart TVs—but in order to participate in the stream chat, you should access the webinar from a desktop or laptop computer.

The live webinar will be eligible for 1 contact hour of continuing education credit recognized by ACVP's CaPCE accreditation program for all cardiovascular technologists, sonographers and registered nurses, as well as the Association of Vascular and Interventional Radiographers, an ARRT-recognized CE evaluator (RCEEM+), for radiologic technologists.

To ensure you receive continuing education credit, you must register for the webinar.

  1. Register. Register on ACVP's website to ensure delivery of continuing education credit.
  2. Attend & Evaluate. Attend the live webinar and complete an evaluation - link will be sent to registrants and advertised at the end of the webinar.
  3. Receive credit via email. You will receive an email from me within two weeks with your certificate!

Register, now »


Catch up on our last webinar:

In the first expert panel discussion of our free cardiac ce webinars series, on June 4, 2020 our panelists discussed how their organizations are contending with the Covid-19 pandemic. We explored the immediate impact that Covid-19 has had on organizations in terms of staff retention and restructuring, new care delivery processes in the wake of Covid-19, information sharing within and between institutions, permutations of “trust” in the time of a pandemic, employee emotional responses to increased stress and accelerated changes, and many more topics relevant to how Covid-19 continues to change the way we work.

You can catch up by watching the webinar via our on-demand education platform, for which you can earn CE credit! But if you'd rather cut straight to the information shared, we've summarized the main points of discussion and commentary, below.

Continue reading Free Cardiac CE Webinars Continue Thursday!

Free Cardiac Continuing Education Webinar – Tomorrow!

ACVP webinar - free cardiac continuing education webinar

Tomorrow, June 4 at 1PM Eastern, we are excited to bring you a free cardiac continuing education webinar, an expert panel discussion on cardiovascular clinical care during the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.

Our panel features truly outstanding non-physician administrators at the top of the field of cardiovascular care discussing their personal experience and outlook on cardiac care at their organizations around the U.S.

Access instructions for our free cardiac continuing education webinar:

We'll be streaming the webinar, live, on YouTube. Anyone can access the webinar on Thursday at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INjhYJTw1Ro

As we'll be on YouTube, you'll be able to view the webinar on your phone, desktop, or even your Smart TVs—but in order to participate in the stream chat, you should access the webinar from a desktop or laptop computer.

The live webinar will be eligible for 1 contact hour of continuing education credit recognized by ACVP's CaPCE accreditation program for all cardiovascular technologists, sonographers and registered nurses, as well as the Association of Vascular and Interventional Radiographers, an ARRT-recognized CE evaluator, for radiologic technologists.

To ensure you receive continuing education credit, you must register for the webinar.

  1. Register. Register on ACVP's website to ensure delivery of continuing education credit.
  2. Attend & Evaluate. Attend the live webinar and complete an evaluation - link will be sent to registrants and advertised at the end of the webinar.
  3. Receive credit via email. You will receive an email from me within two weeks with your certificate!

Register, now »


Our Panelists

Continue reading Free Cardiac Continuing Education Webinar – Tomorrow!

Support for Cardiovascular Professionals through COVID-19

ACVP Support for Cardiovascular Professionals Through COVID-19

Towards the beginning of this crisis, I wrote a message to our network regarding our response to COVID-19. Crucially, I want to remind everyone, again, that ACVP has maintained a remote staff infrastructure for many years, and our day-to-day operations and support for cardiovascular professionals has not changed despite COVID-19.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to update our members on how ACVP continues to provide outstanding support for cardiovascular professionals through COVID-19, and how we've been spending our time to continue to support our members and our profession.

1. Facilitating Virtual Continuing Education

The Alliance of Cardiovascular Professionals hasn't stopped developing and delivering quality continuing education in a virtual capacity. So far, in March and April alone, we've served hundreds of hours of continuing education to non-physician cardiovascular professionals through our new CVCEU on-demand education platform, which offers more than seven hours of educational modules absolutely free of charge.

We're working diligently behind the scenes to expand those offerings with all-new content, as well as secure sponsorship so that we can continue to deliver these new modules to professionals for free!

2. Facilitating Discussion & Collaboration in a Critical Time

Through this crisis, we've been blessed to have the active and engaged leadership of outstanding professionals and administrators in cardiovascular care to facilitate discussion and the sharing of best practices in real time.

We also continue to connect professionals, directly, with ACVP's CONNETWORK program. Thank you to our fellows and our leaders for going the extra mile despite the increased demands on their time.

1&2(b): Pre-Announcing Our Live Webinar Series in May

To facilitate both excellent virtual education and collaborative discussion, we're very excited to announce a LIVE webinar series in May which will feature outstanding cardiovascular service line administrators and directors and non-physician cardiovascular professionals sharing their experiences and insight into clinical care during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as looking forward to the new normal in cardiology services as the world slowly reopens.

These moderated panel discussions will provide excellent, real-time clinical education and CEs for attendees, free of charge. Stay tuned for more information - and make sure you're getting our emails by signing up, here.

Continue reading Support for Cardiovascular Professionals through COVID-19

How COVID-19 is affecting work for cardiovascular professionals

ACVP - How COVID-19 is affecting work for cardiovascular professionals.

It's an overwhelming and busy time for every one—especially for our cardiovascular professionals who are doing their best to provide high quality care as hospital resources are diverted to containing the COVID-19 pandemic. At the Alliance of Cardiovascular Professionals, we reached out to some of our fellows and leaders to offer insight into how COVID-19 is affecting work for cardiovascular professionals, how different organizations are handling the crisis, and what the future holds for cardiovascular professionals.

If you'd like to know about ACVP's own response to COVID-19, you can find that here.

We are particularly thankful to new fellow Jeff Richards, MBA, RCIS, FACVP, who made the time to provide us with the following, detailed response to kick off discussion among our entire network about how COVID-19 is affecting work for cardiovascular professionals.

If you have a spare moment, please tell us how COVID-19 is affecting your work!

Leave a comment, below »


As an RCIS in a very busy Cath Lab, my workflow has changed dramatically. Our lab went from doing twenty-five to thirty cases a day to less than five procedures. The Cardiology team has been diligently working to comb through patients and are only bringing to the lab individuals who are deemed urgent or emergent. The cardiac team is relying more heavily on coronary CTA than they may have in the past as it is generally quicker and exposes fewer staff members. That being said, we are still conducting outpatient, endomyocardial biopsies for post cardiac transplant patients as timely medication adjustments in the event of rejection are still crucial.

Our staffing model has changed drastically as well over the past few weeks. We are only bringing in one to two teams and are letting staff go home as quickly as possible throughout the shift. In the past, we have generally worked on three person teams consisting of a combination of nurses and technologists. Our workflow typically has one nurse sedating and one or two technologists driving the table and circulating. However, with our goal of reducing exposure, we have dropped the in-room team down to one nurse and one technologist, with a third team member outside the room to aid in fetching products, imaging consoles, and anything that may be outside of the procedure room.

Continue reading How COVID-19 is affecting work for cardiovascular professionals