The Ten-Minute Interview with Thomas Salerno, RN

I graduated from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital School of Nursing in January of 1980. I then worked in a few ICU/CCUs in the Philadelphia area for several years until I took a job as a cath lab nurse at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in 1984. There I had the pleasure of working with Sheldon Goldberg, MD and Tom Hewston, RN. It was at Jefferson that I realized that I was a cath lab nurse and always would be. This was when the whole picture of cardiology came together for me. I already had experience taking care of post-MI patients as well as other cardiac patients. By working in the cath lab I was able to see which artery was causing the MI, which wall was affected, and how to fix the problem. From there I took a position as an angioplasty nurse at Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia. Next, I opened a low risk diagnostic cath lab at a small community hospital where I was fortunate enough to get administrative experience. In 1995, I became the Nurse Manager of the Adult Cardiac Cath Lab at Deborah Heart & Lung Center in Browns Mills, New Jersey, where I worked for 5 years. After that, I became the Nurse Manager of the Cardiac Cath/EP Lab at Presbyterian Medical Center, which is part of The University of Pennsylvania Health System. In January of 2002, I was offered and accepted the position of Director of the Education Council for the SICP. Why did you choose to work in the invasive cardiology field? I chose this field for the same reason many nurses go to the cath lab...day shift with weekends and holidays off. I soon found out that I truly loved interventional cardiology. We were the core lab for the original TIMI trial and while I didn't necessarily enjoy getting called in during the middle of the night, I was able to realize that I was making a dramatic difference in the lives of my patients. That is what I like most about the field we really make a difference. To see a 40 or 50-year-old patient come in with a widow maker lesion, leave the lab with a fully dilated vessel, and know that person can now go home and play with his or her children and hopefully lead a full and productive life, is as much job satisfaction as anyone could ask for. What is the most bizarre case you've ever been involved in? The most bizarre case that I can remember (and there have been many) was this one: I was assisting on a cath on a female patient who was about 90 years old. I remember letting her know that she was going to experience a hot flash when we performed her ventriculogram. As we performed her ‘v-gram’ she shouted, “Ooooo! Can you do that again? I haven't felt like that in over 30 years!” Of course we all had a good laugh over that and we did not oblige her request to do that again. If you could send a message back to yourself at the beginning of your cath lab career, what advice would you give? I think I would tell myself to take a statistics course and learn how to write a research paper sooner rather than later. Those would have been invaluable to me at an earlier stage of my career. Why did you choose to get involved with the Society of Invasive Cardiology Professionals? How did it happen? I have been a member of the SICP and a supporter for the last 4-5 years. While at Deborah Heart & Lung Center, I enrolled all of my staff in the SICP. After coming to Presbyterian Medical Center, my administrator, Rob Gianguzzi, asked me to meet a friend of his who was in town for a wedding. That friend happened to be Roger Siegfried RCIS, President of the SICP. He told me that the SICP had a position open for a Director of the Education Council. I told Roger that I was already heavily involved in education and that it would be an honor to serve on the SICP Board in that capacity. Roger took my resume with him at that time, presented it to the rest of the Board, and I was appointed to the position in January 2002. Your work for the SICP is volunteer. What motivates you to continue? My motivation for continuing on the Board (and all of the work that it entails) is primarily to be able to have a voice in how our profession moves forward. Whether it’s in the educational standards or with pending legislation; I have a voice that is heard. We all need to know that we make a difference, and as a board member I know that I can and do make a difference. Where would you like to be professionally when it is time to retire? When it's time for me to retire (after serving the SICP in any capacity needed) I like to think that I will have found my way back into clinical cath lab work (as opposed to administration). The reason I say this is because I’d like to know that I was once again making a daily difference in my patients lives. I may be too old to wear lead at that time, but hopefully not. When I retire I'd like to work on a fishing charter boat or start painting again, or both. Who do you admire in the field of invasive cardiology? I admire all the professionals in this field who made difficult decisions that contributed to the major advancements we have seen in the last 20 years. Most of all I admire Dr. Andreas Gruentzig. When he first started doing angioplasty, many of his colleagues thought he was crazy. I remember one of his colleagues saying, You’re going to blow up a balloon in someone’s coronary artery? You’re going to kill someone doing that! Yet he went ahead and pioneered the technique that for years we called the Gruentzig technique. That took guts. I guess I admire guts¦maybe I should've gone into gastroenterology. What changes do you think will occur in the field of cardiology in the coming decades? The changes that I foresee in cardiology are: 1. I believe that cardiovascular diagnosis will become less and less invasive. Although I don’t necessarily see cardiovascular intervention really becoming that much less invasive in the near future. 2. I think that we will find an effective way to reverse the atherosclerotic process within the next decade or two and that will probably put a lot of us out of work. 3. I hope to see a lot more money spent on cardiovascular research, particularly some of the money from the cigarette lawsuits. 4. “Restenosis” will become a chapter in cardiovascular history books.