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YOUNG plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr Bronwen Schoenfeld has made her mark with several firsts in the Midlands.
Recently she made local headlines when she performed free complicated surgery on Neo, a tiny Yorkshire terrier, to correct its cleft lip and palate. The pooch – and its owner – had their lives transformed by the operation, which took an hour and a half and was carried out at Midlands Veterinary Clinic in Howick.
Last week, Schoenfeld officially opened a new six-bed day clinic and theatre at her Midlands Specialist Clinic and Laser Clinic practice in Main Road, Howick, after many months of construction.
The staggering costs – “the operating table alone cost more than my car” – are expected to be recovered in the long term, however.
“There is a dire shortage of hospital beds in Howick. Mediclinic Howick does a superb job coping with the demand, but there is still a gap between supply and demand,” she said.
Schoenfeld, who is only just out of her 30s, is thrilled with her new “baby”. It’s an achievement that makes her 15 years of arduous medical studies seem worth the effort.
She started practising in Howick nine years ago, doing “everything because I enjoy variety, but also quite a lot of skin cancer reconstruction, breast reconstruction after mastectomies, and a fair amount of cosmetic surgery”.
Patients are, in the main, local, but she also treats a number of Cape Town, Johannesburg and overseas clients. The latter come mainly for cosmetic surgery.
The catalyst for building the new day clinic was that until now, she was limited when working from her rooms. “I can do local anaesthetics, and smaller procedures, like cosmetic eyelifts and facelifts – in fact, anything you can numb with a needle you can do out of a hospital, but medical aids don’t always want to cover those costs.
“The new clinic allows me to step it up and do general anaesthesia, because day clinics are recognised by the medical aids and it becomes more economical for patients. And it is more convenient for them.”
The clinic boasts state-of-the art equipment. “There are exceptionally stringent standards to pass the legal medical requirements, so the laminate flow air-conditioning system, for instance, which has to measure the minute particle count and which cost R2 million, is topnotch and of the highest qualification,” she said.
Her new theatre sisters, scrub nurses and sterilisation staff are highly trained and qualified.
“There were 101 reasons to construct this new day clinic, including my vision of bringing back good old-fashioned nursing, personalised attention to detail and care, and having passionate staff who love what they do. I see the clinic as complementing the existing excellent health facilities in the area,” she said.
The Dundee-born, Pretoria Girls’ High-educated surgeon is married to an South African Airways captain, and mother to a 4and an 8-year-old. Juggling her job and often single parent role isn’t easy, but working in a field that produces so many rewards helps compensate. And compared to her registrar days of working 90 to 100 hours a week at both the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic and Johannesburg General hospitals, and still having to study for a couple of hours a day after that, this must be plain sailing.
“We would do 30-plus hour shifts… most of it standing,” she said.
Schoenfeld is still awaiting the final stamp of approval from the board of health funders before she can officially start operating from her new day clinic – but already she has a long patient waiting list.
“My staff and I are all psyched up and ready to go,” she said.