The team behind a study providing culturally safe detection of heart disease, has received a major award from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM).
A group of Cairns Hospital clinicians who are part of the Powerful Pictures study, recently received the inaugural Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF) Award from ACEM.
The study involves clinicians working in partnership with communities across the region to improve early detection and management of heart disease, including access to advanced cardiac imaging.
Through respectful, community-led approaches - like yarning, family-inclusive consent, prioritising people over paperwork, and centering around First Nations voices to define what culturally safe care looks like - the study improves early detection of conditions like coronary artery disease, enhances trust, strengthens clinician-patient communication, and increases access to advanced cardiac imaging such as CT coronary angiography.
As a result of the study, better models of care for earlier detection, treatment and management of heart disease are now being implemented across Cairns, Atherton and Weipa hospitals with collaboration from partners including Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation, CSIRO, Flinders University, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital , and Queensland Health.
Chief investigator and Cairns Hospital emergency physician Dr Katrina Starmer said the Powerful Pictures study not only listened to the needs of First Nations patients presenting with chest pain, but it also bolstered research in the Far North.
'We’re really thankful to EMF for all the years of support they’ve given us, for this project and others,' Dr Starmer said.
For more information about the study, head to Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF) - Powerful Pictures: Shaping Culturally Safe Cardiac Care in Far North Queensland