Congratulations to Peita Price from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health

The Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ) Nursing Affiliate Prize is awarded for Excellence in Cardiac Nursing Research. The prize is awarded by a panel of judges and is awarded if a contribution is considered to be of sufficient merit. Peita Price was awarded the prize for her research entitled: “Effectiveness of a phone-based care coordination pilot on reducing hospital utilisation and costs for patients with chest pain”

This research looked at the effect of the HARP Chest pain program, designed to support and educate patients that have attended RMH Emergency Department with Chest pain. This includes patients with a broad range of conditions such as Angina, Gastro oesophageal Reflux Disease and Anxiety. The Nurse calls patients within 48hrs of discharge from ED, and tailors education and advice based on their need. They use Action planning and care planning for education about their chest pain, medications and lifestyle and strongly encourage patients to link into their local doctors. The patient receives 4 phone calls over 6 months.

The results showed that patients enrolled in the program were more than twice less likely to return back to hospital within 30 days and this led to potential cost savings of over $1500 per patient.  This shows a lot of promise for the extension of the program and most importantly the feedback from patients has be amazing with patients saying things like “reassurance is important” and “some-one cares”.

Peita Price is currently enrolled as a PhD candidate within the School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne, her thesis is a realist enquiry about the needs of frequent presenters to hospital with chest pain. Peita is a Registered Nurse with Post Graduate Certificate in Critical Care (CCU) and Masters of Public Health (majoring in Health Program Evaluation). Peita is currently working as a Team Leader of the Hospital Admissions Risk program (HARP) Cardiac Services, based at Merri Community Health Service and Royal Melbourne Hospital.