Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Improving Patient Experience And Education By Leveraging Technology, Cathy Palleschi, Wendy Osgood, Mark Parker, Cecilia Inman, Alicia Russell, Eileen Shanahan, Erin Pappal

Operational Transformation

It is estimated that 65% of the population are visual learners. With that in mind, a team of cardiac nurses in a large academic tertiary hospital developed a quality improvement project to hopefully improve patient engagement as well the patients’ perception that the nurses explained things in a manner that they could understand.

Baseline patient survey scores for the question, “Nurses Explained Things In A Way That I Understand”, were under the 75^thpercentile for a period of 9 months. A root cause analysis was conducted and it demonstrated numerous reasons for this score.

Several countermeasures were instituted to …

Neurocardiac Risk Stratification 6 Hours After Resuscitation From Cardiac Arrest, A Bilkanovic, Z Haxhija, L Lucas, J Dziodzio, R R. Riker, T May, H Friberg, D B. Seder

Maine Medical Center

Introduction:

• An increasing number of patients are resuscitated from out-ofhospital cardiac arrest. Triage to optimal treatment pathways could improve and increase the efficacy of post-resuscition care.

• Despite great variability in etiology, duration, and patterns of injury from cardiac arrest, post-resuscitation treatment guidelines emphasize standard treatments. We hypothesize that by categorizing competing risks very early after resuscitation, it may be possible to improve the efficacy and efficiency of care.

• When measured very early after resuscitation, suppression ratio (SR, the percentage of suppressed EEG), correlates with severity of brain injury and the likelihood of poor neurological outcome.

• The …

Potential Of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor As A Biomarker Of Coronary Artery Disease In Subjects Undergoing Cabg Surgery, Teaka Jackson, Sarah Peterson, Amanda Favreau-Lessard, Joanne Burgess, Susan Bosworth-Farrell, Robert S. Kramer, Douglas B. Sawyer, Sergey Ryzhov, Michael P. Robich

Maine Medical Center

Introduction:

• Coronary artery disease (CAD) causes local hypoxia due to reduced blood flow

• Hypoxic conditions are known to induce vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) production, a key contributor to angiogenesis

• The purpose of this study was to determine the potential of VEGF as a marker of myocardial stress in subjects with CAD undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery