The career that makes her tick

The average human heart beats around 100,000 times a day. For most of us, it does so unnoticed, ticking away in the background of our everyday lives. But in a coronary care unit, the heart is the thing everyone’s watching. And the nurses and doctors who work there learn to read its every signal.

Miranda Pecovnik first developed an interest in the heart during a clinical placement in a cardiology unit through her undergraduate nursing degree.

“Something about it immediately clicked for me,” she says. “I really liked the way things could change quite quickly in the ward. You had to use critical thinking skills and communication skills with patients, because having something wrong with your heart is really scary.”

It was this combination – the sharp clinical edge and the deeply human stakes – that drew her in.

Through her studies, she had heard about St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. For the better part of four decades, the hospital has been doing something few others in Australia do: performing heart and lung transplants.

Its program is one of the largest and longest running in the country, with survival rates exceeding international benchmarks. This sparked an interest in Miranda that lingered through her degree. 

“I had always wanted to work at St Vincent’s Hospital,” she recalls, “so I applied after graduating and was fortunate enough to get a job here in the coronary care unit.”

Finding her niche

After settling into her new role, Miranda heard about the postgraduate programs St Vincent’s offers in partnership with ACU – speciality courses for nurses who truly want to master their field.

She was encouraged to apply for the Graduate Certificate in Clinical Nursing (Cardiac Care), which includes modules on cardiothoracic surgery and rehabilitation. Enrolling turned out to be one of the best decisions of her career.

“It transformed me into much more of a nurse,” says Miranda, who completed her graduate certificate in 2024, and is now studying a Master of Clinical Nursing at ACU.

Through ACU’s affiliation with the hospital, the course followed a unique ‘two-by-two’ model, with two units taken online and two on the ward. The online component offered self-guided learning opportunities and flexibility; the face-to-face hospital units offered valuable immersion.

But it was the clinical rotations that truly changed the way Miranda understood her work. Through the course, she had stints in the intensive care unit, the cardiothoracic surgical ward, the catheterisation laboratory, and the heart lung clinic – an outpatient service for transplant patients.

This gave her the chance to witness the whole arc of the patient journey, from crisis to the operating theatre and beyond.

“It has made such a difference to my practice because I feel a lot more confident when patients come to me with questions about procedures that they’re nervous about,” she says. “I can speak with confidence because I’ve seen it myself.”

The rotations also allowed Miranda to build skills in the aspects of the job she’d previously sidestepped. At the beginning of the year, students in the course receive a workbook filled with clinical competencies – some of them daunting.

“Things like tracheostomies and temporary pacing wires I’d earlier avoided because I was afraid of them,” she says. “But throughout the year you get so much education, so much exposure and practice with these more advanced skills, and you develop the confidence to do things that were once scary to you.”

A captivating specialty

Many of the patients Miranda and her colleagues encounter at the coronary care unit are on the road to a heart transplant.

The reality of that process is often eye-opening – especially when observing patients at crisis point.

“We see them in their worst times,” Miranda says. “Some of them are almost blue and grey and they can’t walk more than five metres without being short of breath.” 

Long after their organ transplant, many of these patients come back to visit the coronary care unit while in the hospital for routine appointments – just to say hello.

“It’s so wonderful to see people who wouldn’t have survived without our help,” Miranda says.

“It’s nice to know that you’ve played an important part in their second chance at life.”

It’s moments like these that keep Miranda going.

She also enjoys the compelling nature of working in cardiac nursing at St Vincent’s. The hospital is at the forefront of innovation in heart care, and Miranda has a front-row seat.

During her time at the unit, the hospital was involved in the world’s first implant of a CorWav LVAD – a left ventricular assist device – in a human patient. The life-saving technology uses a revolutionary approach to pump blood around the body, preventing heart failure while an organ donor can be found.

“It’s basically doing the job of the left ventricle and acts as a bridge to transplant,” Miranda says. “People who wouldn’t otherwise survive in time to get an organ can get an LVAD inserted and go home and live pretty normally, so they’re fit and optimised in preparation for their transplant.”

This exposure to the cutting edge of cardiac care is part of what makes the speciality so captivating to Miranda.

“There are always new things happening and always so much to learn,” she says. “It’s just the most exciting and fascinating speciality.”

Yet her advice for those considering a career in cardiac care, or indeed any other aspect of clinical nursing, is refreshingly hands-on.

“Feel your patients’ pulses,” she says. “Carry a stethoscope and listen to their chests. Really practice those skills because it will make a difference in your practice.”

She also encourages nurses to follow their interests, surrounding themselves with people who share their passion. 

“I feel really lucky to work in a place where the people around me are so good at their job and care really deeply about the patients,” she says. “That culture really matters. Find an area you really love and people you enjoy working with who that are kind and motivated.”

Discover how postgraduate clinical nursing helped Miranda to deepen her understanding of the patient journey, ahead of ACU’s Advanced Clinical Nursing launch in 2027. Watch the video.

Keen to find your niche in nursing with a postgraduate degree at ACU? Explore the options.