November 26, 2017
HFSA President's Blog: Day 69

HFSA President
Christopher O’Connor,
MD, FACC, FESC, FHFSA

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

One of the great joys of working with HFSA over the years is seeing the enormous amount of research activity from our nurses, pharmacists, and other non-physician health care professionals.  This research advances the standard of care, enhances the overall patient experience, encourages compliance and contributes to improved outcomes.  It is an additional opportunity to renew the field and develop breakthroughs to help our patients.

HFSA Officer, Corrine Jurgens, PhD, RN, FHFSA is Associate Professor and Director of Cardiovascular Research at Stony Brook School of Nursing. She has spent many years leading nursing research and sees it as very similar to research conducted by physicians. Nurses generally conduct studies to inform nursing practice, but the goal to improve patient outcomes is the same.

As an example, Corrine reports that her research focuses on the biobehavioral factors underpinning symptom perception and response among heart failure patients, to identify strategies to improve timely response to symptoms and decrease or avert hospitalization. Since every hospitalization increases morbidity and mortality risk and decreases quality of life, this type of research leads to better patient outcomes and clearly supports the mission of HFSA.

J. Herbert Patterson, PharmD, FHFSA, Professor of Pharmacy and Research Professor of Medicine at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has participated in many clinical trials over the years, and has mentored pharmacists to build careers in research while developing his own investigative interests.  He has worked with the same heart failure physician, Dr. Kirk Adams, for over 3 decades and notes that “long before anyone else, Kirk had the vision that a multidisciplinary team of a physician, nurse and pharmacist could accomplish so much more than working individually.”   They have applied that philosophy to clinical care and to conducting heart failure research.  He believes that this is what HFSA is all about: taking the team approach to optimizing care of patients with heart failure.

Building a research culture that embraces the broad spectrum of healthcare providers and heart failure patients is critical to our success. I applaud the HFSA’s culture of inclusiveness and know you join with me to endorse team-oriented care, team-oriented research and the advancement of knowledge to help all of us to better serve our patients.

Christopher O'Connor, MD, MD, FACC, FESC, FHFSA
President HFSA
@coconnormd
Vision: To Significantly Reduce the Burden of Heart Failure

Corrine Jurgens, PhD, RN, FHFSA

J. Herbert Patterson, PharmD, FHFSA