The COVID-19 pandemic has driven groundbreaking changes in the multidisciplinary care of patients, use of developing technology, education of trainees and cooperation among medical science stakeholders. A review of these changes and their future impact in cardiovascular medicine will be examined in ACC.21's COVID-19 Intensive.

The first session will feature the Louis F. Bishop Keynote focusing on health equity and a presentation on the importance of collaboration in vaccine development. The second session will look at how the pandemic fueled the development of leadership, yielded new roles for nurses and advanced virtual education and telehealth. The session will end with panelists reviewing two case presentations covering myocardial involvement and thrombosis, says Doreen DeFaria Yeh, MD, FACC, a session co-chair.

"We want the focus to be on things we have learned and not just on what we have done," DeFaria Yeh says. "We will look at the importance of leadership and collaboration and how being bold and brave led to vaccinating millions of patients just one year after this crisis started."

In her Bishop Keynote, Michelle A. Albert, MD, MPH, FACC, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, will spotlight how mortality and outcomes data among COVID-19 patients highlighted racial inequalities in health care and she will address mechanisms needed to ensure more equitable care. A review of the development of the COVID-19 vaccines will look at how scientific and industry cooperation expedited the development processes.

The second session will look at how program directors overcame challenges in training cardiology fellows, the best use of virtual education and the evolution of telehealth and hybrid treatment models, along with the importance of treatment teams, including a nursing director's view on the role of nurses within treatment teams during the pandemic.

David Gerard Rizik, MD, FACC, the session co-chair, stresses the importance of using the recent past to look ahead. "As we look back at the past year, we had no knowledge in how to keep hospitals and the practice of cardiology running smoothly. Our system was overwhelmed. This session is not only about what we learned, but how we apply those lessons learned," he says.

Keywords: ACC Publications, Cardiology Magazine, ACC21

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