What’s Next for Your Career?

Membership is an Opportunity to Advance, Earn More

What does membership in a professional association like the Alliance of Cardiovascular Professionals offer you? Short answer: a higher salary, more opportunities for advancement, and more chances for you to be recognized for your work and seen as a professional who advances the field of cardiovascular care.

Association membership and compensation are connected. A 2008 Smith Bucklin report analyzed salary data across the United States and found, when controlling for other demographic and job category variables, that association members earned on average $10,000 more than their non-member colleagues.

What's next for your career? How do you reach the next rung of the career ladder? How might you overcome the physical and emotional exhaustion of your hard work and find personal and professional fulfillment above and beyond the day-to-day?

Maybe it's unclear how you can demonstrate your commitment and worth, beyond simply showing up and doing a great job every day. Or maybe it seems like you've achieved the highest level of recognition or compensation for your profession, and there's no more space to grow. Maybe you want to make a greater, direct impact on the quality of care in your community by advancing into management, but are unclear where to start on that path.

No matter what you're trying to accomplish in your life, personally and professionally, every big achievement starts with a first step. If we want to be sure of achieving our goals, we should make sure our first steps provide us with the support we need to finish the journey.

As the only professional association catering specifically to non-physician professionals in cardiovascular care, ACVP is the best resource to help you achieve your goals. Membership in ACVP is a first step towards advancing your profession and your career.

Keep reading to learn more about how ACVP membership can support you, or take your first steps now by joining ACVP and accessing our many supportive benefits and services.

Join ACVP, now »


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Are you paid enough?

CVTs, RNs report higher wages in 2017

A national survey of cardiovascular professionals in Cath, EP and combo labs showed strong wage growth for Cardiovascular Technologists and Registered Nurses from 2015 to 2017.

National average hourly wages reported by CVTs and RNs grew significantly—from $30.81 to $33.16 and from $36.64 to $39.57, respectively—while average wages for Radiologic Technologists regressed from their 2015 highs—from $36.13 to $34.61—according to the 2017 CATH/IR/EP Wage Survey presented by SpringBoard Healthcare.

"While each licensure all had moderate wage growth between 2011 and 2013, in 2015 the trends of the different licensures diverged," reads the SpringBoard report. "RNs and CVTs actually decreased in 2015, while RTs had very strong growth (almost 6%); however, in 2017 that trend reversed as RNs and CVTs had extremely strong growth (almost 10%) while RT compensation decreased."

Take ACVP's 11 minute survey now for more complete data & detailed analysis.

Over the period SpringBoard has surveyed wage trends for Cath/IR/EP professionals—2011 to 2017—CVTs have shown the strongest wage growth "by a large margin" compared to RNs and RTs in the West, Northeast and South regions.

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CT angiography and stress tests can predict heart attacks

Invasive angiography unnecessary?

Noninvasive CT angiography and CT myocardial stress perfusion imaging can adequately predict heart attacks and major adverse cardiovascular events, according to a study published yesterday in Radiologyno invasive coronary angiography (ICA) required.

Invasive coronary angiography (ICA), along with stress tests and single photon emission tomography (SPECT) imaging, has long been the "gold standard" for making determinations of whether a lesion is hemodynamically significant and likely to result in major adverse cardiovascular events, reads a Radiological Society of North America press release.

But this "gold standard" has its drawbacks—in costs and risk.

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Career ladders getting higher for nurses—what about allied health?

All cardiac care professionals could see more professional development, opportunity.

With the switch to value-based medicine, more nurses are becoming hospital CEOs reads an article published online today in Hospitals & Health Networks Magazine.

Three hospitals in the six-hospital Memorial Healthcare System in Florida are now run by nurses—for RNs, it seems, the career ladder has grown longer, with more nurses climbing higher in healthcare management.

Beyond Florida, an August 2016 article in Becker's Hospital Review listed 33 nurses who transitioned to hospital CEOs.

Why are more hospitals tapping nurses to run the organization? Management competencies are changing, says Lamont Yoder, RN, of the American Organization of Nurse Executives to H&HN Magazine's Maggie Van Dyke.

Continue reading Career ladders getting higher for nurses—what about allied health?