#104. What's it like to handle a human heart? Or to operate in that small space between life and death? And is there grief for a surgeon when a patient dies during, or after, surgery?

This is The Silent Why, a podcast on a mission to open up conversations around grief, to see if hope can be found in 101 different types of loss.

Loss #52 of 101: Loss of a life for a heart surgeon

Meet Mark Field, a cardiac surgeon from Liverpool (in the north of England) who joined me (Claire), in-between commitments at work, to talk about life, death and loss in heart surgery.

Now, this isn't a subject that's discussed much with surgeons, and you'll hear Mark say that even he had reservations talking about it, but it's such an important area to highlight. Just because you work in a career that encounters death, doesn't that mean you find it any easier to face than people in other jobs. And, like many other careers we've covered on the podcast, it's once again surprising how little training is provided to medical professionals when it comes to delivering the news of a patient’s death. Especially when people's responses to bad news are so varied.

I was introduced to Mark through the Aortic Dissection Charitable Trust, and knew this was a man I wanted to speak to when he sent me the best excuse for being late to a Zoom call ever. I received an email just after the start time had passed that simply said: “Sorry Claire. 5 minutes! Trying to prevent death!!”

In this conversation you'll hear about how hard it is when major operations don't end with a healthy recovery, how surgeons control (or don’t control) human emotions, the privilege of working with such a valuable organ, and why hope plays such an important role in Mark's job.

And because trying to co-ordinate the diaries of a journalist and a heart surgeon got really tricky, Chris wasn't able to join me in this episode, so I was flying solo for the first time in 53 losses.

If you want to hear how other careers handle dealing with death, visit www.thesilentwhy.com/letschat and scroll down to 'Jobs working with loss, grief and death' for a full list.

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