Janine Doucet, Administrative Director, New Brunswick Heart Centre.
Front line cardiology health-care professionals from across the province are invited to the New Brunswick Heart Centre to learn exactly how cardiac services are offered to patients.
The Heart Centre offers tertiary cardiology services to patients of this province. The patients who benefit from the Centre come from other facilities inNew Brunswick and many transition back to those same facilities after services at the Centre have been provided.
As such, the inter-facility program provides healthcare professionals at referring facilities with an in-person experience at the centre, which helps to improve patient care across the province.
Through this program, health-care providers in referring facilities spend a day at the Heart Centre. Part of the day is spent in the cardiac catheterization laboratory, where they follow a patient’s journey through the laboratory, watch an interventional cardiology procedure, and follow the patient post-procedure.
The nurses and interventional cardiologists enjoy teaching and sharing information that will enable the visiting health-care provider to feel better prepared to care for these patients in their home facility. Electrophysiology services offer a similar experience for health-care professionals interested in that specialty.
The second part of the day is spent in the cardiac operating room. During this time, the visiting health-care provider is given the opportunity to speak with members of the multidisciplinary team and to see a cardiac surgery.
Nurse preceptorship at the New Brunswick Heart Centre
The clinical perfusionists and nurses make every effort to sculpt the experience to the interest of the visiting employee, and cardiac surgeons enjoy sharing information as they proceed through the operation.
The goal of the experience is to provide health-care providers with exposure to aspects of cardiac services that are unique to the Heart Centre. Knowledge, that was once limited to healthcare providers at the Heart Centre, is now expertise that is shared by many in the Province.
Those who have completed the site visit have said it enables them to better prepare the patients they refer to the Centre, and improves overall patient care. The live experience also gives them greater confidence in treating patients post-procedure.
