HEALTH HERO?
plastic surgery skills. But for Steve, it was the love and passion and pride he took in ‘making his patients whole again in body and mind’ which really stood out. ‘He’s an extraordinary man with an incredible skill,’ says Steve. ‘He’d probably say he’s just doing his job, but we felt he did far more.’ On tHat first day, Mr Hettiaratchy operated on Steve’s left leg, inserting metal rods to stabilise it. the following day he wired his broken ribs. On the third day, he began an intricate six-hour hour operation to reconstruct Steve’s badly damaged left leg, taking skin and tissue from his right thigh to repair the hole in his left calf.
‘Mr H talked me through the whole operation in detail, the next day he came back and repeated it, then on the third day he asked me to describe it to him, so he knew I understood what was going to happen and the end goal.’
‘talking builds the connection between doctor and patient and an understanding of what’s likely to happen next,’ says Mr Hettiaratchy. ‘that’s the foundation of recovery.’
Steve describes the compassion of the nursing staff as ‘unbelievable’. ‘there were times I couldn’t stop crying and they’d come and have little chats. at other times they knew to leave me alone. their sensitivity and care blew me away.’
Steve also drew huge comfort from the support of his highly skilled surgeon. ‘Mr H would come and chat to me every day, just to see how I was feeling.’
Even now when Steve returns for appointments in other departments, Mr Hettiaratchy will ‘pop in to see how we’re getting on — he will regularly email to see when Cara and I are due in for our next check up so he can say hello’.
Shehan Hettiaratchy, the son of psychiatrists, was brought up with a sense of public service, but it was watching the tV show M*a*S*H as a child which made him want to combine military service with trauma medicine.
He joined the army in his gap year, then spent five years in the reserves while studying medicine at Oxford before joining the Royal army Medical Corps in 2003. He completed two tours of afghanistan — ‘a professional high point,’ he says. ‘You’re working with the highest performing medical team that has ever existed. I never want to see those kinds of injuries again, but to be part of that team was a real privilege.’
His training and background is in plastic surgery: he specialises in elective hand and limb reconstruction. ‘But I spend over 50 per cent of my time doing trauma work, which I am passionate about as it involves such intense teamwork across different disciplines,’ he says. ‘Doing things with a gang of friends who are highly bonded is the best possible way to work, because it’s supportive.’
His close relationship with patients sounds a long way from the traditional image of surgeons. ‘Hierarchies don’t work,’ he says. ‘I want to get my patients back to where they were before they were injured. the goal is not just fixing an arm and a leg, it’s getting people back in their professional and social environment, functioning normally as soon as possible.’
‘ the biggest challenge with trauma is that people go from