May 1: National Physicians’ Day
Happy National Physicians’ Day! Today, we want to highlight one of the cardiologists on our team, Dr. John Ducas.
🫀 What’s the best part about your job?
“Helping patients get through the physical danger and emotional trauma of suffering a heart attack. Their life is at risk, they might have massive damage to their heart, and the rest of their lives could change. They could experience massive trauma - both emotional and physical - from the event. Being able to help prevent these bad outcomes and getting the best outcome possible for my patient is the best part of my job.”
🫀 What do you wish patients knew about your role in the care of heart attack patients?
“That I’m not just working to get the best outcomes for the one patient in front of me, but that I’m working to make changes to the whole provincial healthcare system in how we treat heart attacks. As part of the ACS Network, we make sure Manitoban patients, no matter where they live in our province, all get the most effective treatment in the fastest time possible.”
🫀 What do you wish patients knew about heart attacks?
“I want patients to understand that when they are having a heart attack, time is muscle. Every second counts. The longer it takes to get medical help, the more heart damage will occur. The fastest and safest way to get help for a heart attack is not by driving yourself to a hospital, but by dialing 9-1-1. If you drive yourself, your heart could suddenly stop with a cardiac arrest. You need paramedics by your side quickly to save your life if this happens. Rural or urban, Dial, Don’t Drive!”
🫀 What projects are you currently enjoying working on?
“In addition to our Dial Don't Drive campaign, I’m particularly excited about two other initiatives that the ACS network has been working on. The first is our Tailoring Post Discharge (TPD) program. In TPD, we’re revamping the way patients are managed after a heart attack. This has the potential of reducing length of stay, improving patient teaching, and improving medical outcomes. Further, we’re comparing the effectiveness of the WRHA Rapid Response Nurses and the Telus Remote Home Monitoring Program against historical controls. This work will allow us to improve the quality of care with the potential of shortening length of stay.
The second project is the Ten Minute Tracing (TMT) initiative. Here, we’re working to improve the suboptimal time we have observed from First Medical Contact to ECG (FMC-ECG) in the Winnipeg Emergency rooms. The guideline-recommended time for FMC-ECG is ten minutes. The first site we have partnered with is Grace Hospital. With our help, the Grace has reduced these times from a median of 30 minutes to 6 minutes! We’re now extending this work to the Health Sciences Centre. These shortened times have the potential of saving lives in STEMI patients presenting to our Winnipeg Emergency Departments.”
