EuroHeartCare is the annual congress of the ESC Council on Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professions, (CCNAP) targeting audience from clinical practice and research settings across the whole spectrum of cardiovascular care, so for example, from prevention, acute cardiac care, heart failure both in children grown ups, families and communities.

Between 18-20 May, EuroHeartCare 2017 was held in Jönköping, Sweden in collaboration with the Swedish Association on Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professions (VIC). The congress welcomed 338 delegates, with attendees from 38 countries  worldwide, representing a variety professions such as nurses, physiotherapists, dieticians, lab technicians, behavioral scientists and cardiologists. 

The EuroHeartCare conference has grown to a 2.5 day event with preconference workshops on the first day followed by fourteen scientific sessions spread over a full two days. They were organized in two lecture rooms running in parallel, covering a wide range of topics.

Poster sessions were running during the breaks and at lunch time.

EuroHeartCare 2017 had a faculty full of leading experts in many fields. The conference was opened by two well known and highly respected professionals who have been (and still are) an inspiration to conduct high quality research to strengthen evidence based care. Both these two leaders in the field have been acknowledged national and international with life time achievement awards from professional organizations and played an important role for the development of nursing and nurses in ESC and AHA.

In the opening ceremony on the first day, Prof Kathy Dracup (UCSF) spoke about ‘Teamwork, knowledge integration and performance in cardiovascular care.’  Prof Bengt Fridlund was the other keynote lecturer who spoke about Cardiovascular Nursing the last decades, addressing major achievements nurses in major research collaborations, pivotal life saving intervention studies, development of guidelines and educational programs.

Fridlund, was specially honored by all Swedish and international participants for his contributions in the Swedish but also the international arena of cardiovascular caring research.

During the conference a lot of attendants were inspired by reports from presented cases and the wide range of research  and spoke with people from other countries about building on successes, overcoming challenges and strengthening collaborative efforts for the future. This year 229 abstract were submitted and 193 were presented in 3 moderated poster sessions, 2 poster sessions, 2 oral abstract and one clinical case sessions.

The preconference workshops were organized to get more indepth knowelgde of a certain topic. This year we had a ECG Interpretation workshop in which participants were provided an opportunity to develop a systematic approach to the interpretation of the ECG, explored common but difficult challenges in ECG interpretation and learned to recognize important ECG warning signs.

The other preconference workshop was entitled ‘Publishing your articles with impact and influence’ In this very well attended workshop 3 editors, 3 authors and a publisher discussed the peer review process, impact, writing academically in English when it is not your native language and the use of social media to increase knowledge about impact and influence of scientific publication.

A new feature this year was the CPR Competition. This was a ‘drop-in’ workshop and competition on Friday and  Saturday. In this this competition /workshop attendees got the latest CPR information from the Swedish Resuscitation Council (SRC) and methodology from Ryhov Hospital in a self-practice area and then tested skills against other delegates! The competition consisted of performing single rescuer basic CPR (adult) for a 2-minute-period.

THE CCNAP is looking back on another successful conference for ESC’s cardiovascular nurses and allied professionals and looking forward to EuroHeartCare 2018 in Dublin from 7-9 June. It would be wonderful if we could double the number of participants there!

Read more about EuroHeartCare at the FB page!

Tiny Jaarsma