My Working Day: Mark Da Costa, cardiac surgeon at University College Hospital Galway, is setting up a new unit to provide care for patients in the west
I am the lead consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the new department of cardiothoracic surgery at University College Hospital Galway. Since I started in the position last October, my job on a day-to-day basis has involved setting up the new unit, equipping the theatres and planning for the new wards, intensive care and high-dependency units.
I have also been spending a lot of time liaising with the various departments within the hospital that will be supporting us, such as labs, physio, occupational therapy and social work.
As every department in this hospital is already understaffed, a new service such as ours can place a lot of additional stress on the system unless the proper staff are put in place at the outset.
I have already started doing thoracic cases to support the oncology and respiratory services and am planning to carry out the first open heart surgery in a public hospital in the west of Ireland over the next few months.
My work day involves the department's administration as well as my academic work with the department of surgery at NUI Galway and my clinical workload.
Open heart surgery usually takes an average of four and a half hours to complete as there is a lot of setting up work at the start and a lot of finishing up work at the end.
During most open heart surgery, we must stop the heart so we use a bypass machine to continually deliver blood to different parts of the body. At the end of the operation, we have to take the patient off bypass, start the heart again slowly and reverse the blood thinning agents to ensure there is no surgical bleeding before closing up.
The most satisfying aspect of my job is being given the opportunity to set up a new unit to provide the best possible care for patients in the west of Ireland and to do meaningful research and teach at the same time.
The most frustrating aspect of the job from day to day are problems that are out of the hands of myself and the hospital administration such as the length of time it takes to appoint new staff and the amount of bureaucracy involved.
Cardiac surgery is a time-intensive speciality and the patient is potentially so critical in the first two days after surgery that work takes up a lot of my time and it can be hard to balance work and family life.
In conversation with Michelle McDonagh