Providing a specialist nursing service to cardiac patients

It has been a huge privilege to be awarded ‘runner-up’ in the Cardiovascular Nurse of the Year category of the BJN Awards 2020. Although my name is attached to the award, I feel it belongs to the whole team who have worked tirelessly to make the changes demanded of them. This has enabled us to incorporate new patient groups and mould the service into what it has become today: one we are all very proud of.

Our journey started in 2010 following a review of the national coronary heart disease (CHD) standards (NHS Quality Improvement Scotland, 2010). We identified some major shortfalls in arrhythmia management throughout Scotland's Health Boards. In Tayside, we attempted to tackle this by submitting a bid to the British Heart Foundation (BHF), for two part-time positions to develop three identified workstreams:

At this time, arrhythmia nursing services in Scotland were few and far between, but were well-established in England, so we took the opportunity to carry out a study tour of various arrhythmia nursing services there and establish networks locally and nationally. We spent time mapping existing services within our Health Board and identifying the gaps in provision. We took the opportunity to meet with key stakeholders to identify how best to develop the identified workstreams.