To be a visitor, Mended Hearts members must undergo a three-hour training session and must be reaccredited every year. Visitors are allowed to give no medical advice, but they do encourage every patient to participate in cardiac rehabilitation. With patient confidentiality, it is difficult to get visitors in to see heart patients, but Mended Hearts has a visiting chairman. Every afternoon, he or she calls Riverside and obtains an operating room schedule as well as the type of surgery that is scheduled. The chairman calls visitors and assigns them to the respective room numbers of the scheduled patients.
Visitors then talk to patients and their families.
Taylor carries informational packets in his briefcase to give to patients if the cardiac surgeon hasn't yet done so. Taylor adds that he tries to prepare families as to what the patient will look like when he or she reaches the recovery area. Mended Hearts members see anywhere from three to 10 patients a week. Upon their initial recovery from cardiac surgery, patients are given a heart pillow to hold against their chests when they cough and move. Mended Hearts and the Telephone Pioneers, a service organization for telephone company employees with which Taylor is also active, create and donate these to heart patients.