Care

The Ottawa Model for Smoking Cessation is a highly successful and widely adopted program for getting hospitalized patients to quit smoking. The intervention is most effective when support continues beyond discharge. Staff follow-up is a resource-intensive approach to maintaining patient contact. Kerri-Anne Mullen, Network Manager for the program, presented a study examining the impact of an automated telephone follow-up system using interactive voice response (IVR) technology.

Several leading voices in cardiovascular medicine spoke out strongly at this year’s Congress about the looming crisis in health care and the need for the system to finally take prevention seriously. This message rang out from both sides of the border and took centre stage (that is “center” for our American friends) at the opening ceremony.

At this year’s Canadian Cardiovascular Congress, Heart Institute staff participated in nearly 100 research presentations, workshops, panels and invited talks.

New cardiac imaging technology at the Heart Institute will allow physicians and researchers to greatly expand their pursuit of advanced heart function studies while ensuring shorter diagnostic wait times for patients.

The Beat spoke about recent developments in the STEMI protocol with Dr. Michel Le May, who developed the Heart Institute’s pioneering STEMI program.