A Clinical Ladder in the Procedural Setting

Are you climbing the clinical ladder?

Often in clinical settings, there are limited opportunities for upward mobility. In fact, the clinical "ladder" in your organization might be a single position---Team Leader---or you might not be climbing at all.

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Let’s Make a List: Time-Saving STEMI Practices

We need YOU to weigh-in. What are some time-saving STEMI practices you've discovered in your practice?

We've updated our comment system on ACVP Blog to hopefully make it easier and more interactive to comment. So add your idea---it doesn't have to be a best practice, maybe just a little thing you overlooked---and vote on the best, most-interesting ideas from other ACVP members!

Our profile of the Sentara RMH cardiac team (see part one and part two) has started us off with some great ideas for time-saving STEMI practices, so we'll add those below. Meet us in the comments!

Cath Lab Team Building @ RMH

In part one of our profile of Sentara Rockingham Memorial Hospital's cardiac team, we discussed how team members stepped up to to continue activating STEMI from the field and reduce the rate of false calls by educating local EMS. In this post, we'll look at Sentara RMH as an example of excellent cath lab team building from a management perspective.

How do you go about cath lab team building? You could start by getting the team out of the lab, as cardiac operations manager Linwood Williams argues.

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RMH Cardiac Team Works with Local EMS to Improve STEMI Calls

imageIn 2015, Sentara Rockingham Memorial Hospital in Harrisonburg, Virginia earned the American College of Cardiology's ACTION Registry®-GWTG™ Platinum Award for the second consecutive year for providing superior care to high-risk STEMI patients.

Sentara RMH was also recently awarded the American Heart Association Mission: Lifeline® Silver Award for STEMI.

An important quality consideration in the ACTION Registry, door-to-balloon time sets Sentara RMH and its cardiac team apart.

In a recent interview, cardiac operations manager Linwood Williams reported that Sentara RMH's average door-to-balloon time is 46 minutes compared to the national average of 59.2.

We reached out to Williams, an active Alliance of Cardiovascular Professionals member, to profile his excellent cardiac team and ask the question---how did they improve STEMI?

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