As part of its critical care educational series, the Critical Care Leadership Network (CCLN)—a joint initiative of GNYHA and the United Hospital Fund—hosted an all-day program on Post-operative Care of the Cardiac Surgical Patient on April 15.
     
Nearly 200 physicians and nurses from close to 40 hospitals attended the program, which was designed to provide practical instruction on caring for post-cardiac surgery patients in the intensive care unit, as well as the preparation and transport of cardiac patients from community hospitals to those with cardiac surgery services. As with all the CCLN educational programs, the April 15 program featured clinical experts from GNYHA member hospitals.
       
The goal of the CCLN programs is to identify best practices and standardize critical care across the region as well as to highlight the depth of critical care expertise in the region, while leveraging the region's collective resources to train and develop hospital critical care staff. The lead faculty for this program included Robert Sladen, M.D. from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and Vladimir Kvetan, M.D. from Montefiore Medical Center. Drs. Sladen and Kvetan, along with their colleagues from NewYork-Presbyterian and Montefiore, also contributed their time and expertise to design and execute the program. 
       
The program sessions included a review of the current literature on medical cardiac intensive care, as well as perioperative management of patients undergoing cardiac surgery, including physiology, pharmacology, and cardiac support technologies. Attendees were also provided with hands-on exposure to technology and cardiac devices, and discussed a number of case studies with the expert faculty.
       
The next program in the critical care series will take place on June 17, 2008, at the GNYHA Conference Center and will look at specialty critical care in the non-specialty setting, with a specific focus on post-surgical care and burn care. Critical care specialists interested in participating in any CCLN programs should contact Terri Straub or Zeynep Sumer at GNYHA for more information.