The American Heart Association's 2012 Nashville Heart Walk is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 6.

Mouzon Siddiqi, who has accrued 11 months of sick leave during her 37 years as a Vanderbilt employee, has to use some of those days after suffering a cardiac arrest on Sept. 6, outside the University Club.

At the inaugural Heart Walk Pep Rally last week, the Vanderbilt Heart Sounds introduced this year’s song, an original composition titled “Walk the Walk,” written by Cardiac Surgery administrative assistant Kurt Eger and cardiologist Mark Glazer, M.D.

After Stacey Browning, R.N., a Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit charge nurse, got a report on a heart attack patient who was being transported to her unit from an outside hospital, her immediate thought was, “They are sending us a patient we are not going to be able to recover.”

The Department of Cardiac Surgery experienced its highest case volume to date with 1,245 adult cardiac surgeries at Vanderbilt University Hospital during the last fiscal year, according to department chair John Byrne, M.D., who spoke at Vanderbilt Heart’s quarterly town hall on Friday.