Nurse and Technologist Symposium Celebrates 20th Anniversary

The symposium continues to grow by adapting to the needs of attendees

Back in 1991, when the Cardiovascular Nurse and Technologist Symposium first debuted at TCT, it was unique in addressing the needs of non-physicians at a major medical meeting.

Today, symposia for such health care professionals are now regularly featured at medical conferences all over the world, including EuroPCR, Cardiovascular Research Technologies and Angioplasty Summit-Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics Asia-Pacific.

“Awareness is growing that this is not just a physician-driven subspecialty but involves nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants and technologists who are all essential in making things happen,” Marian C. Hawkey, RN, clinical research director for the Transcatheter Valve Program, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, and course director for the Nurse and Technologist Symposium, told TCT Daily.

“Very early on, TCT Course Director Martin Leon, MD identified the importance of educating not only physicians, but also the entire team who takes care of the patients. In order for the field to really evolve, you have to engage every single individual who’s involved in care,” said Alexandra Lansky, MD, director of interventional cardiovascular research at the Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn., and former co-director of the Nurse and Technologist Symposium.

Factors for success

The Nurse and Technologist Symposium has been an integral component of TCT for 20 years, growing steadily over this time. One of the reasons behind the program’s success, Hawkey said, is the close attention paid to attendee feedback. In fact, in response to this feedback, there are now continuing medical education programs for symposium attendees.

“The amount of continuing education credit available for nurses and non-physicians, in general, has been an issue that has been brought up over the years by the Nurse Tech audience,” said Lansky. “Being able to offer CE credit was a big project that the meeting and planning group undertook, and we are now very excited that our attendees will be able to obtain credit for this educational experience.”

    Another facet of the symposium’s success, according to Lansky, is the high quality of educational material offered by the symposium that addresses important issues shared by all allied health care professionals. “There has to be a catalyst to make that happen. Before the symposium, they didn’t have a forum in place; TCT has afforded allied health care professionals that forum,” she said. “It has been wonderful to see other medical and society-driven groups supporting and pushing forward this trend.”

What to expect from this year’s symposium

According to Hawkey, this year’s symposium will acknowledge the 20th anniversary by inviting the participation of those who were involved in the inaugural Nurse and Technologist Symposium. In addition, “the symposium will include sessions focusing on transcatheter valve therapy, which has become such an important area of growth in the field of interventional cardiology,” she said.

“We’ll once again have a half-day RCIS [Registered Cardiovascular Invasive Specialists] review course as part of our program that includes a ‘Hands on Hearts’ session, which we introduced last year,” Hawkey said. “This session, which features cadaver hearts that can actually be picked up and examined for different pathologies, was an enormous success.”