Cardiovascular Nurse Ambassadors Project

About the project

Managing cardiovascular disease is a challenge for Victorians, with many experiencing multiple hospital admissions. Cardiovascular disease is a significant burden on the lives of Victorians, with many experiencing multiple hospital admissions and challenges in accessing specialist cardiac care in hospital and community care settings.

In this Commonwealth-funded project, we partnered with 20 Victorian health services to embed evidence-based models of care to support people to manage their cardiovascular disease at home and spend less time in hospital.

To achieve this, we supported hospitals to recruit a dedicated cardiac nurse to pilot models of care that support patients with high quality care in hospital and in the early discharge period. This statewide project began in January 2022 and completed in April 2024.

Outcomes

Overall, the project helped to reduce the percentage of patients with specific cardiac conditions from returning to hospital within 30 and 90 days after being discharged home. However, not all health services saw this improvement.

Improvements were seen across all sites in quality-of-care processes such as timely follow up, discharge planning, inpatient care coordination and self-management education.