Cardiac Clinical Community of Practice: COVID-19

The ACI Cardiac Network will provide an opportunity for sharing of ideas, strategies, local solutions and concerns with respect to COVID-19 Pandemic preparedness.

The community of practice will be multidisciplinary and include representation from all districts and networks. It will enable clinicians and clinical managers in cardiology from all districts to provide expert advice and guidance to the system, and to escalate matters that require a statewide or system response.

Membership

This community of practice is open to all ACI Cardiac Network members. As a minimum it will include representation from all districts and networks. However, membership may be extended more broadly to include all interested NSW Health staff as well as professional colleges, private providers/clinicians and other non-government organisations as appropriate to the clinical speciality.

Join the community of practice

Email ACI-Cardiac@health.nsw.gov.au for more information.

Meetings

Meetings will be on a weekly basis on a Friday, from 27 March, at 2pm using Skype for business. Skype for business details will be attached to the calendar invite, sent to the participants.

Aims

• Support clinicians to network and share strategies, local solutions and issues with respect to pandemic preparedness for cardiac care.
• Identify, prioritise and escalate issues related to COVID-19 which are actually or potentially affecting clinicians providing cardiac care that require a statewide or system response.
• Review and provide expert clinical advice on guidelines, resources and other information.
• Share Ministry approved advice and resources on the response to COVID-19 that can be circulated within all districts and networks.

This community of practice is not a group which is able to endorse statewide changes or make decisions that impacts a unit or system or allocate funding to recommendations.

Governance

• Executive sponsor: Dr Nigel Lyons, Deputy Secretary, Health System Strategy and Resources
• Clinical lead: Professor David Brieger, Head of Coronary Care, Concord Hospital
• Community of practice secretariat: Bridie Carr, Cardiac Network Manager, ACI
• Key stakeholders: Local health district clinicians and managers.

The Cardiac Network will escalate issues raised by the community of practice to the Strategic Reform and Planning Branch. Key information will be collected and distributed through MOH-COVID19-ClinicalAdvice@health.nsw.gov.au inbox, which will be monitored by the Strategic Reform and Planning Branch.

Collated issues and advice will be escalated by Dr Lyons through to the Public Health Emergency Operations Centre (PHEOC) and/or the State Health Emergency Operations Centre (SHEOC) as appropriate.

PHEOC and SHEOC responses will be provided to Strategic Reform and Planning Branch and then to the community of practice secretariat.

Weekly updates will be provided to NSW Health Chief Executives.