By
NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — When you're working with the heart, confidence is as important as expertise, according to Dr. Michael Hagley, MD, interventional cardiologist with Hutchinson Regional Healthcare System.
"If you're going to do these types of specialties, you have to have a certain sense that you do it well," Hagley said. "In other words, if you're a heart surgeon and you don't think you can do the procedure as well as anybody, then ethically, you probably shouldn't do it. It's the same thing in cardiology. If you don't think that you can do it as well as anybody, then you should refer to somebody who you think does it better."
With that said, the staff at Hutchinson Regional has both experience and expertise, with Dr. Hagley in his 20th year in Hutchinson and heart surgeon Dr. Robert Fleming working in the area since 1994.
"I just want people to know that other than transplant and neurosurgery, there isn't a lot we don't do here in Hutch," Fleming said.
In fact, with that confidence, positive outcomes are what they expect, and that helps them be able to focus on the task at hand.
"I think most of us who do this are fairly matter-of-fact," Hagley said. "At least in my practice, if things go well, my response emotionally is, that's pretty much what I expected is for things to go well. You do lose a little bit of that wonder, unless you have the opportunity to maybe sit back and deliberately reflect on things. Then you realize that while you were worrying about the details, you actually took an amazing journey."
It's not that interventions with the heart don't have risk, but rather that experience has taught them both that proper application of their expertise and that of the cardiac rehab center at Hutchinson Regional can result in a great quality of life for patients, as long as they are allowed to intervene in time.