HeartBeat

Welcome to EuroHeartCare 2018 in Dublin

Gabrielle McKee

Programme Chair Coordinator

On behalf of the Council on Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professions (CCNAP), we invite you to partake in EuroHeartCare 2018 in Dublin, Ireland on 9–11 June 2018. The opening evening with preconference workshops, keynote speeches and networking reception will be followed by two busy days of more workshops, plenary sessions, lunchtime symposia, debates, abstract and clinical case sessions. This year we offer several different registration options for attendees, including one day attendance rates and special rates for local clinical staff (all Ireland). The best rates are available to CCNAP members and with the early bird option (26 March). Sign up for CCNAP membership on https://www.escardio.org/Councils/Council-on-Cardiovascular-Nursing-and-Allied-Professions-(CCNAP) – it is free!

Friday 8 June includes four main symposia: Optimising the role of the patients, their carers and family; Risk management; Wellbeing after a cardiac event; Optimising physical activity for primary and secondary prevention; and two sessions exploring innovative management in the acute and chronic treatment of heart failure.

Saturday 9 June includes the symposia: Improving initial assessment in the cardiac patient; The special needs of the older adult with cardiovascular disease; Care of the patient with arrhythmia and a session on Trends in cardiac surgery.

This year we particularly include sessions that should prove attractive to you working in the clinical area and in cardiac surgery and a special focus on allied health professionals. We hope this introduction will whet your appetite to either or both present at and attend the conference. The speaker line-up is currently under invitation and we routinely update our online programme of the speakers who will present on the updates, and key and topical issues in our fields: https://www.escardio.org/Congresses-%26-Events/EuroHeartCare

To bring home the message

Harleah Buck

University of South Florida, College of Nursing, Tampa, USA

Systematic reviews advance the science by critically analysing results across existing research and provide a high level of evidence on a topic. My paper, Caregivers’ contribution to heart failure self-care: A systematic review,¹ published in this journal, collected the existing heart failure caregiver research as part of a project involving US and Canadian nurse scientists. But before we could conduct the study, we needed to establish the state of the science – what was known about heart failure caregivers and what they did to help patient self-care. This paper was the result.

Being the top cited researcher is deeply meaningful! First, there is the knowledge that your work is being used by other scientists and clinicians to improve patient care. Second, there is the gratification that your work continues to be valued year after year. A strong systematic review tends to grow in citation numbers until someone else is willing to do the hard work of designing and conducting an updated review.

It is interesting; I published my first paper, a literature review and concept analysis of spirituality, in 2006. This paper continues to be widely cited – to today, over 100 times. Since then I have been involved in four other review projects, including this EJCN paper. With each project my methodology improved. But my focus was never on the numbers of citations, but rather on building the science and treating review papers with the same degree of rigour as I would bring to a research project. Because the process is the same – an unanswered question should drive the expert team to design the study that will answer that question.