2020 The Year of the Nurse

Dr Robyn Gallagher is Professor of Nursing at the University of Sydney where she leads a team researching secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Her focus includes contemporary health technology, cardiac rehabilitation, health literacy and cognitive impairment. Robyn has received national and international awards for her research and her student supervision. She is a Fellow of the American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology. She has published more than 170 peer-reviewed papers and 12 book chapters. Robyn is current Chair of the International Council of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation and immediate past President of the Australian Cardiovascular Health and Rehabilitation Association, and Cardiovascular Nursing Council of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, Editor of the Journal of Advanced Nursing and program committee member for the European Society of Cardiology Cardiovascular Nurses and Allied Professionals.

Catriona Jennings is currently at the National Institute for Prevention and Cardiovascular Health at the National University of Ireland – Galway where she is the Director of Nursing and Interdisciplinary Relations.

She is currently coordinating the INTERASPIRE international surveys of Preventive Care in Malaysia, Argentina, Indonesia and Colombia. Prior to this she served as the European Research Nurse coordinator in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the International Centre for Circulatory Health, Imperial College London between March 2002 and May 2019. She has coordinated both randomised controlled trials (RCT) and surveys. The EUROACTION cluster RCT was conducted in eight countries and 24 centres in Europe between 2002 and 2006. Catriona led the multidisciplinary London team who were responsible for training project staff and developing the health professional and educational materials. She coordinated the third, fourth and fifth EUROASPIRE surveys in over 20 countries in Europe, and the British Cardiovascular Society UK based surveys of preventive management in coronary patients and high-risk individuals called Aspire-2-Prevent and Aspire-3-Prevent. At the end of 2011 she completed coordination of a second EUROACTION study called EUROACTION plus intensive smoking cessation with varenicline which was implemented in 4 countries including the UK.

She read French for her first degree and subsequently trained as a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital in London. She then specialised in cardiac nursing and finally cardiac rehabilitation, leading a programme at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. Catriona was a Senior Teaching Fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London where she had a leadership role in Masters Programmes in Cardiovascular and Respiratory Healthcare and in Preventive Cardiology between 2012 and 2019. She has completed a PhD on concordance for cardiovascular risk factors and concordance for change in families. Catriona has taken leadership roles in professional societies serving as President of the British Association for Nursing in Cardiovascular Care which is an affiliated group of the British Cardiovascular Society and Chair of the European Society of Cardiology Council on Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professions..

Irene Gibson is a nursing graduate from the University of Limerick. Irene is a strong advocate for the nurse’s role in cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention and much of her career to date has focused on the design, development and evaluation of innovative community based models of CVD prevention. As Director of Programmes at Croí the West of Ireland Cardiac & Stroke Foundation, Irene provides strategic and operational oversight for a diverse portfolio of CVD health initiatives ranging from public awareness campaigns to prevention, rehabilitation and patient support programmes. Examples include the award winning Croí MyAction and CLANN obesity management programme. In 2020 she led the accreditation process resulting in the Croí Heart & Stroke Centre becoming the first centre in Ireland to receive European Association of Preventive Cardiology Accreditation.

Irene holds an MA in Health Promotion, Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Education and is an Adjunct Lecturer at the College of Medicine, NUI Galway. She is the past Programme Leader for the Masters in Preventive Cardiology at the National University of Ireland, Galway and is Director of Programmes and Innovation at the National Institute for Prevention and Cardiovascular Health (NIPC). She is a member of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Association for Cardiovascular Nurses and Allied Health Care Professionals (ACNAP) Education Committee and the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC) Primary Care and Risk Factor Management nucleus. In pursuit of her research interests Irene was recently awarded a HRB SPHeRE PhD scholarship on the Collaborative Doctoral Programme in Chronic Disease Prevention at NUI Galway. Over the next four years she aims to conduct patient-focused research on the role of peer support in digitally delivered CVD prevention programmes.

Professor Susan Dawkes is a registered nurse who has spent over twenty years working with cardiology patients in Scotland and Canada. Her clinical roles included nursing in acute cardiology units and latterly working as a specialist nurse in cardiac rehabilitation. Susan is a Professor of Nursing and Cardiovascular Health as well as Head of School for Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedic Practice at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. Susan is the current President of the British Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (BACPR) and represents BACPR on the International Council of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation. She helps to build research capacity and capability through her work as an Honorary Research Consultant in the Cardiology Department of NHS Lothian.

Ms Maria Hayes is a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Cardiothoracic surgery at Blackrock Clinic, Dublin and is currently developing this role into an Advanced Nurse Practitioner position, having just completed an MSC Advanced practice in UCD. During the past twenty-five years since qualifying her career pathway has been in the acute clinical setting where she has gained vast clinical experience. Ms Hayes has worked in acute and critical care in private and public hospitals completing her specialist critical care education whilst working in the Mater Hospital and continuing to refine her specialist advanced knowledge and skills in UCD.

At present Ms Hayes works as a nurse adviser and role model at clinical level, demonstrating specialist knowledge and skills through nursing practice. She is involved in clinical audit and acts as a change agent ensuring best practice. She is involved with the development of guidelines and policies in line with JCI standards. Ms Hayes has had a number of papers published in peer review journals. Ms Hayes has been a guest expert speaker over the years at a number of conferences. She has been an active member of the Irish Nurses Cardiovascular Association (INCA) and is currently the Vice President of the association. Ms Hayes was a co-organiser of the European Society of Cardiology Cardiac conference, Euro Heart Care, which was held in June 2018 in Trinity College. Ms Hayes is a committee member of the Irish Association Critical Care Nurses (IACCN) for the past few years. Ms Hayes was awarded the FFNMRCSI Fellowship of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery RCSI by examination in 2017. She has also completed a large National study with INCA into nurse’s knowledge and awareness of ESC guidelines with the aim to influence future training of Cardiac Nurse Programmes.

Kim Newlin is the Director of Nursing Clinical Operations at Sutter Roseville Medical Center. After earning a BS in Exercise Physiology at UC Davis, she completed the RN/CNS program at UC San Francisco, and the Gerontology/Adult Nurse Practitioner post-master’s program through the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

As an Adult Nurse Practitioner, Kim sees patients and supervises operations at the hospital’s transitional care Heart Health Clinic, which she helped establish eight years ago. She works with a multidisciplinary team and several post-acute care organizations to improve the patient experience during their stay in the hospital and the transition home, increasing access to patients from a large geographical area, while reducing readmissions back to the hospital. Since she assumed a leadership position in cardiac and pulmonary rehab four years ago, both programs have doubled in size and continue to grow. She also works on process improvement programs for the cardiovascular service line within the hospital and throughout the region. Kim is President of the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurse Association’s Board of Directors, acting as advisor for the Million Hearts Cardiac Rehab Collaborative and participating on the AHA CVSN Complex Patient and Family Care committee./p>