Dr. Mark Kearns
Mark Kearns, PhD candidate in UBC Experimental Medicine and researcher with the UBC Centre for Heart Lung & Innovation has been awarded the very first Robert Hayden Research Fellowship. Dr. Kearns is also a resident cardiovascular surgeon at St. Paul’s Hospital.
The Robert Hayden Resarch Fellowship was established by the BC Centre for Improved Cardiovascular Health (ICVHealth) and Cardiac Services BC to promote cardiovascular outcomes research to improve care in BC. The award is in honour of Dr. Robert Hayden, the head of cardiac surgery at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, BC and a clinical professor in UBC’s Division of Cardiovascular Surgery for more than 25 years. Dr. Hayden was a pioneer in recognizing the importance of utilizing health information to guide and improve clinical practice, and played an instrumental role in the development of the provincial registry for cardiac surgery and interventional cardiology, now known as HEARTis.
Dr. Kearns will be examining how sternal wound complications can be prevented in high-risk patients undergoing open heart surgery in his PhD research project. He will work collaboratively with ICVHealth’s team of PhD-trained epidemiologists, biostatisticians, and knowledge translation experts to successfully execute his research project.