On the 21st May we celebrate our brilliant profession, raising awareness of our unique identity and many excellent contributions to healthcare. As a cardiac physiologist, you hold a pivotal role in your clinic or hospital, performing scientific evaluations and providing key technical support for many cardiac interventions.
This day, 21st May, marks the birthday of Willem Einthoven, the doctor and physiologist who pioneered the clinical electrocardiogram in the late 1800s. The ECG is foundational to all five modalities of specialisation within our profession. Whether you work in ECG (non-invasive), the Cath Lab, Echo, Cardiac Devices, or Electrophysiology, we proudly celebrate together on Einthoven’s birthday, much like all nurses honour their profession on Florence Nightingale’s birthday.
To celebrate Cardiac Physiologist Day PiCSA hosted the 6th National Cardiac Physiologists’ Day Trivia Night on 21st May 2024. This annual event is held to celebrate all the Cardiac Physiologists across Australia in what is always an exhilarating evening of knowledge and camaraderie.
Our hosts for 2024 were PiCSA Board Members Leah Wollin and Jenny Fong, who both ensured the evening was very entertaining with a bit of learning along the way. We are thankful to the Victorian Heart Hospital for allowing PiCSA to host from this venue again in 2024.
Once again, we had an incredible amount of interest in the Trivia Night with 13 teams registered! There was a mix of familiar faces as well as some new competitors this year. Unfortunately, the 2023 champions “Playing Heart to Get” from Canberra Health Services were not able to enter a team this year to defend their title.
The “Loose Cannons” from Toowoomba Hospital dominated early in the trivia. This team was certainly one to watch having placed a very close second in the 2023 trivia event, even though they had answered the most questions correctly. “Hips and Hearts” from the Queensland Children’s Hospital and “French VT” from the Victorian Heart Hospital also maintained consistent placings at the top of the leader board in the first half of the night. There was fair amount of place jumping in the the first half of the evening but by the brief half time intermission the team from Alfred Health had made their way into second spot just behind Hips and Hearts!!
Unfortunately, a technical issue saw the Toowoomba team drop out of the top 5 early in the second half of play. The intermission refuel certainly benefited a few teams and we saw the “Tassie Tickers” and “Royal Adelaide Hospital Monkeys” making their first appearances in the top 5 leader board.
The scores were very close in the final stages of the trivia night and the win could have gone to any of the teams in the top 5 at this stage. Double points came into play for the final 4 questions and with half of the teams answering 2 of these questions incorrectly it lead to a convincing win from the team at Queensland Children’s Hospital: Hips and Hearts!!!
