Did I teach you well? A chance encounter involving two cardiac surgeons
When cardio-thoracic surgeon Nand Kejriwal’s registrar told him in the operating theatre recently there was a patient
for him to see with multi-trauma, he had no idea it would lead to a reunion with his old mentor.
Sydney-based cardiac surgeon Bill Meldrum-Hanna, 61, was in Turangi on holiday when he fell from his bike breaking his
ribs and verterbra.
He was transferred to Waikato Hospital’s emergency department where clinicians inserted a chest tube to drain blood.
This is where the story became even more interesting.
“As I was finishing the case, the scrub nurse gave me a sticker of the patient. I looked at the surname “Meldrum-Hanna”
and made a comment that it was a very unusual surname and the only other time I heard it was in 1996, when I worked in
Sydney’s Westmead Hospital as a fellow and one of the cardiac surgeons, his boss, was named Bill Meldrum-Hanna,” said Mr
Kejriwal
“When I spoke to him in the emergency department, I realised that it was indeed the same cardiac surgeon. Here I was,
meeting him after a gap of 18 years when he was under my care.”
Mr Kejriwal spoke to his wife Patricia the next day.
“She told me that she was a scrub nurse in cardiac theatre at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. And then we
realised that I worked with her for six months in 1995. What a small world!!”
Mr Meldrum-Hanna asked his former student: “Did I teach you well?” to which Mr Kejriwal replied: “Bill, I am managing
your chest injury the way you taught me. Time will tell.”
Mr Meldrum-Hanna has been discharged and is now recovering at his bach in Turangi until he is able to fly back to his
work in Sydney. Unfortunately there will be no fishing this trip.