Published: Monday 21st August 2017

Early career researchers Caitlyn Mainland and Kimberley Keates, from ACU's Mary Mackillop Institute for Health Research, have been nominated for a prestigious prize.

Two early career researchers from ACU's MacKillop Institute have been nominated for a prestigious prize at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Each year, more than 30,000 clinicians and researchers attend the world’s largest and most prestigious cardiology conference (the European Society of Cardiology Congress) to hear the best researchers from around the globe describe the latest advances in preventing and managing the world’s biggest killer of men and women – heart disease.

This year, the Congress will be held in Barcelona, Spain and remarkably, the Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research at ACU will berepresented by two early career researchers in one the meeting’s main prize sessions – the Nursing and Allied Professions Investigator Award.

Of hundreds of research abstracts ranked and scored by independent reviewers and selected for only four spots in the final, two came from the MacKillop Institute.

Both Ms Caitlyn Mainland (presenting GARDIAN of my heart: utility of traffic-light based tool to guide the intensity of nurse-led, multidisciplinary, heart failure management) and Ms Kimberley Keates (presenting Matching delivery of heart failure management to overcome individual barriers to optimal health care: A case of so CLOSE and yet so far) are early career researchers with a strong interest in public health research that assists the most vulnerable members of our community live longer and healthier lives.

“At the conference I will present the usefulness of an innovative risk assessment tool that helps guide the management (via an easy to understand traffic-light system of coding) of typically older patients with heart failure. This tool helps the healthcare team identify who needs care most urgently to avoid recurrent hospital admissions and even death,” Ms Mainland said.

“My presentation focuses on an innovative framework that considers barriers, beyond geographical location, which affect the management of patients with chronic heart failure. Therefore, this framework guides the health care team on how best to deliver care to each patient (based on their barriers to specialist care) from home-visits to structured telephone support,” Ms. Keates said.

The Director of the MacKillop Institute, Professor Simon Stewart said that everyone at ACU, and indeed Australia, should be very proud of Caitlyn and Kimberley’s achievements in being selected for this prestigious final.

“It is testament to the strength and international competitiveness of our research that we have two out of four researchers vying for this prestigious international award” he said.

“Both Caitlyn and Kimberley are already winners for being recognised in this way and I know they will both acquit themselves well in the final, as well build successful research careers in the future” he said.

The Nursing and Allied Professions Investigator Award is being held on the morning of Sunday 27 August at the ESC Congress in Barcelona, Spain with the winner announced at a special ceremony on the evening of Monday 28 August.

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