August 19, 2021

Misty Sharpe - Adult Congenital Heart Disease

25 minutes

Congenital Heart Disease or CHD is the number one leading cause of infant related death and it wasn’t that long ago when the cardiovascular community didn’t have enough “congenital heart disease” specialists working with adult survivors of CHD. Today, with help from the Adult Congenital Heart Disease Association (ACHA) the cardiovascular community has helped educate cardiologists on these abnormalities of the human heart and build a network of specialists throughout the world. I spoke with ACHA accreditation manager Misty Sharpe, also a CHD patient and nurse at Vanderbilt, about what ACHA is doing to connect adult patients, encourage and educate families, as well as work closely with the medical community to ensure families are aware of CHD specialists in their area or where the closest clinic is to their coordinates. As a survivor of CHD, Misty and I discuss the challenges we experienced when we became adults and had outgrown the children’s hospital’s age limit. Discover what happened and how we resolved that problem.

ABOUT MISTY SHARPE

"As the Accreditation Program Manager for the Adult Congenital Heart Association (ACHA), I manage all aspects of the organization’s national Accreditation Program for adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) centers. With a focus on patient-centered care, my role assists and guides programs through the process to ensure each meet a rigorous set of standards comprised of one hundred individual criteria across twenty categories related to staffing, policies and ancillary services. In 2020, the ability to adapt and pivot was critical for non-profit organizations and as ACHA's flagship program, it was necessary that the ACHD Accreditation Program do the same. I transitioned all site visits from an in-person format to completely virtual using the Zoom platform and successfully continued to move over ten programs through the process. During my career with ACHA, I have also participated in and led several initiatives related to volunteer recruitment, support programming improvement, community outreach and fundraising. I have collaborated on a variety of projects across various departments and currently serve on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Standing Committee. My background and education in both nursing and communications has been beneficial in providing opportunities to lend my knowledge and experience to meaningful discussions, projects and initiatives throughout the organization." -Misty Sharpe (Reference: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mistyksharpe/)

All Heart with Paul Cardall is sponsored by doTERRA, whose products are designed to offer hope and healing. For more information on Paul Cardall, please visit https://paulcardall.com/ or find him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Episode artwork

Episode transcript

Socials (insert links for all social handles)