Chief’s message:

March Madness ended tonight for Blue Devil nation, and I am aware of some people that were fortunate enough to get to the game (see the photo of Schuyler and his son Andrew that got to the game at the end of a Spring Break week). Part of the wonder of Duke Basketball is that there are always extremely high expectations  — championship or bust — and they often get close to or achieve the goals.  Nevertheless, there is clearly joy in the way the game is played and the journey through the tournament.  It’s with this background that we want to thank our Physicians on the weekend of Doctors Day to say thanks for all that you to do to set the clinical, educational, research, and most importantly the professional standard for cardiovascular medicine that we continue to strive to.

Highlights of the week:

Vemulapalli to Lead Duke Echocardiography Lab/Cardiac Diagnostic Unit

We are excited to announce that Sreekanth Vemulapalli, MD, assistant professor of medicine in cardiology at Duke, has agreed to lead the Duke Echocardiography Laboratory and the Clinical Diagnostic Unit. The Echo lab faculty and staff have a long tradition of ensuring the highest quality clinical care and research, and we look forward to having Sreek continue this tradition and take us to new heights as we transition to more personalized and efficient cardiovascular care. The selection committee and review group found Sreek to have a clear vision of how we can evolve echocardiographic imaging at Duke to ensure we continue to innovate and provide the very best care for our patients. He began this role effective Monday, March 25.

Vemulapalli’s clinical practice and research endeavors have centered on structural heart disease. He currently serves as medical director for the Vascular Imaging Lab in the Duke Cardiac Diagnostic Unit and leads the interventional echocardiography group within the Cardiac Diagnostic Unit. He serves as co-principal investigator for the Society of Thoracic Surgeons/ American College of Cardiology Transcatheter Valve Therapies Registry (STS/ACC TVT) Analytic Center housed within the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) and as co-principal investigator for the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Data Warehouse and Analytic Center, also at DCRI. Through these positions, Vemulapalli has led efforts to integrate echocardiographic data into the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute Network’s Common Data Model and merged echo data with electronic health records and STS/ACC TVT Registry data at multiple institutions across the US. He also serves as associate director for Healthcare Delivery Transformation at Duke Forge (Duke Center for Health Data Sciences) and is leading efforts to apply machine learning and computer vision techniques to the interpretation of echocardiograms at Duke.

We thank John Alexander, who graciously served as our interim Echo and CDU director through this transition. John demonstrated consistent selflessness and has been a proponent for the faculty and staff. We also thank Dan Mark who served as chair of the selection committee.

Please congratulate Sreek as we welcome him to this new role.

Mock Cardiac Arrest/Resuscitation Drill Held

Our first simulated cardiac arrest with drone AED delivery to the scene was conducted on Friday; this is the focus of a grant from the Chancellor that was awarded to Monique Starks. The research team includes members from Durham EMS, NC State School of Engineering, Duke Pratt School of Engineering, Duke Social Science Research Institute and Duke Department of Community and Family Medicine.

The photo here shows the drone and some of the team members who attended this first mock arrest/resuscitation.

Starks’s grant involves studying simulated cardiac arrests with drone AED delivery and volunteer bystanders to explore the human factors of this technological innovation and see what barriers are going to impede the effectiveness of resuscitation with bystander AED use. The team will be conducting focus groups to explore these issues. Really interesting work and we look forward to learning more!

Grant Funding Awarded

Congratulations to Jenn Rymer, Angela Lowenstern, Sunil Rao, and Schuyler Jones – they learned recently that they will receive $83,000 from the ACC Quality Improvement Initiative to launch the Duke Renal Impairment Program in the Duke Cath lab to reduce the risk of contrast nephropathy.

Heart Warming Moment of the Week!

Congratulations to first year cardiology fellow Navid Nafissi who got engaged to Haley Lloyd at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens last weekend. We are so excited for you both!

Nursing Highlights

On March 22, former and current Central Monitoring staff and nursing leadership gathered together for a celebration in honor of that team. Central Monitoring will be closing in a few months after the transition to local monitoring is fully established across Duke University Hospital. We thank each of these team members for their dedication to our Duke Heart patients over the years.

 

Two members of the Heart nursing leadership team presented posters at the North Carolina Organization for Nurse Leaders Annual Membership Meeting and Conference, which took place on March 21. Meg Wood, BSN, RN presented Orientation to the CICU: The Need for Evidenced-Based Education and the Implementation of the Onboarding Process to Improve the New Graduate Nurse Experience and Lindsay Botzenhart, BSN, RN, PCCN presented Optimizing Meaningful Recognition to Increase Nurse Satisfaction. Thank you for representing Duke Heart at this conference!

Also on March 21, Kelsey Ignat, BSN, RN, CCRN-CMC presented her poster entitled Getting to the Heart of the Matter:  Reducing Burnout and Increasing Resilience in the CICU at the 14th Annual Duke Health Patient Safety and Quality Conference. Nice job!