Developing and implementing a standardized team-based approach to treat cardiogenic shock across Atlantic Canada

Severe heart failure also known as cardiogenic shock is a condition that, due to an injury to the heart, results in the heart being unable to pump enough blood throughout the body. Cardiogenic shock remains the number one killer of all heart-related conditions that patients experience with nearly half dying. Recently, however, the use of an organized cardiogenic shock-team has proven effective in reducing deaths experienced from cardiogenic shock. Cardiogenic shock-teams work because once cardiogenic shock is identified in patients, they allow for several experts to come together quickly to treat it. However, while effective, the use of standard approaches for cardiogenic shock, including having a cardiogenic shock team, is currently not universal for most institutions including the New Brunswick Heart Center. To change this, we require the support and agreement of everyone involved in patient care, including frontline staff (nurses and doctors) and administration (management and hospital executives). Our proposal uses a process known as 'participatory design', where all individuals involved in the treatment and management of patients (frontline staff and administration) will come together and develop a plan to specifically deal with cardiogenic shock. To develop best practices, we will also invite experts in cardiogenic shock from across Canada to talk about their experiences and provide input to us. Once we create a standard protocol, we will prototype these methods in the real world, at the New Brunswick Heart Center, and revise our protocols based on active feedback. We expect that these new protocols will become the standard of care for our institute and will reduce the percent of patients that will die from cardiogenic shock. Furthermore, once a revised protocol is in place, we aim to share our findings with other institutions across Atlantic Canada and the rest of Canada to improve standards of care.