Heart Team Empowerment Workshop: Foundations of a Heart Team

Course Description: Limit to a max of 5 teams.
This interactive workshop equips interdisciplinary teams with the clinical, operational, and team-based skills needed for the attending teams to achieve clinical excellence and sustain a high-functioning Heart Team for mechanical circulatory support (MCS) and shock care post-course. The program combines host-site case presentations, protocol review, shock activation simulation, and clinical best practices to help teams translate theory into implementable, evidence based practice.

Learning Objectives:
• Describe the vision, goals, and structure of an MCS/Heart Team and lessons in clinical efficiency and patient identification from host sites.
• Review patient cases to explore clinical decision making, multidisciplinary coordination, and care considerations.
• Explore clinical considerations for shock identification, escalation, and multidisciplinary communication.
• Review commonly used clinical quality indicators and outcome measures.
• Review key components of cardiogenic shock programs to help participants reflect on opportunities to enhance clinical outcomes within their own institutions.

Attendee Site Criteria:
• Multidisciplinary core team (up to 6 members), minimum 2 attending physicians (no fellows).
• Interventional cardiology (IC) required; consider cardiothoracic surgery (CTS), heart failure (HF), critical care, emergency medicine (ER), advanced practice providers (NPs/PAs), hospital administration, and heart recovery coordinators.
• Administrative support of program 
• A CGS protocol in place or in development
• Ongoing involvement in AMI-CS and HF-CGS workflows
• A designated Shock Coordinator or team champion 
• An active Impella CP or 5.5 physician leader
• Identified need to activate or strengthen team processes (protocols, activation, data)
• Commitment to advance the next CGS milestone within ~90 days