Alfred Spivack, MD, a cardiologist and clinical professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford University, died on April 23. He was 87.
Stanford announced Spivack’s death in a news release on May 5. Peter Spivack, his son, said Spivack died while swimming in the pool at a retirement community.
Spivack was the founder and first director of Stanford Hospital’s coronary care unit, which opened in 1966. He also was the founder of the hospital’s hypertension-anticoagulation clinic and the medical school’s sports medicine training course, according to the news release.
In addition, the release mentioned that Spivack was proactive in encouraging nurses to become more involved in caring for critically ill cardiac patients and perform roles that were typically limited to physicians.
“Al saw that the future of cardiology was headed toward an environment where patients would be intensely monitored in a high-surveillance nursing unit, where the sickest of patients could still get the best care,” Randall Vagelos, MD, director of Stanford Hospital’s adult coronary care unit, said in the news release. “He understood that all of this was going to depend on nurses. There were clearly not enough doctors to create that kind of surveillance.”
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.