Dorothy Pinnock’s heart-felt ambition

HER petite frame and soft voice easily camouflage the immense power Dorothy Pinnock wields whenever she steps into an operating theatre; but being a perfusionist, her expertise is essential to ensuring that every open heart surgery patient that goes under the knife in Jamaica comes out alive.

The job of a perfusionist might at first seem inconsequential to that of a heart surgeon, but one has to be present to monitor the heart-lung or bypass machine. This is because the patient has to be kept alive although their heart has to be stopped and drained of blood so that a surgeon can operate.

“The idea is to divert the blood out of their heart, so when the venous blood is drained into the right atrium, then it is diverted away,” Pinnock explained to All Woman, just minutes after coming from one of these surgeries.

Being only one of two perfusionists on the island, Pinnock has to be present at every cardiac surgery performed at both the Bustamante Hospital for Children and the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), which are the only two facilities in Jamaica where open heart surgeries are done. The only exception to this general rule for her is when she is off the island.

“Perfusion is quite intense, so you can’t like it, you have to love it or you hate it because it is a lot of responsibility. The hours can be long,” said Pinnock, who explained that she cannot leave the operating theatre for any reason until a surgery is finished.

It would have been hard for her to imagine herself in such a life changing position nearly 20 years ago when she was just a teenager and was eager to take just about any job that could provide an income to further her studies. She was a student at the Edwin Allen Comprehensive High School in Clarendon, and had signed up with the HEART Trust/NTA in hopes of them notifying her of any upcoming job vacancies.

In 1993, the training institution contacted her about job opportunities for perfusionists. It was the first time the then 18 year old was hearing the term, but that did not deter her from showing up at the interview with eight other persons where she was informed of her prospective duties. Only three of them were selected for training, and thus began her foray into what she said is an exciting career.

“I think I knew right away that I was in the right place and I really, really continued to love it and I knew I wanted to do it from early in the training,” said Pinnock, whose other two training partners are no longer in the field.

With no formal training available to perfusionists in the region, Pinnock was trained on the job, in Canada, and the United Kingdom. But feeling the pull to pursue tertiary education, she signed up at the University of Technology to do a degree in Chemical Engineering Technology which she completed in 2000.

Even while studying, Pinnock continued to work with the UHWI as a perfusionist as well as at the Jamaica Foundation for Cardiac Disease. This is because while there is another perfusionist on the island, the optimal standards can be better achieved with both being present at every open heart surgery.

“We work together once there is surgery. Even when I am on leave and there is a case, as long as I am on the island then I come in and vice versa for him, so the only true break we get is when we go away,” she said.

“It is difficult to work alone, if you need a toilet break, if you need anything then you can’t really go. Once the patient is on bypass, on the machine, then that is it until the patient is taken off,” she explained.

But even her visits overseas, it seems, have often been tied to the job. She just recently returned from the United Kingdom where she went to defend her research paper for her Master’s in Perfusion Science. This degree is being pursued at the University of Surrey in affiliation with the North East University of Technology.

Pinnock is also a certified pacemaker technician and therefore has to travel to Miami and Puerto Rico from time to time to receive training. As a senior technician, she oversees the fitting of pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators at the UWHI pacemaker clinic which sees up to 60 patients monthly. She also travels to other parishes to fit the pacemakers of the more senior patients who have difficulties travelling.

With her busy schedule, Pinnock admits that there is hardly any time left for fun, but she tries as much as possible to spend time with her six-year-old daughter Janae. Thankfully, she has found a strong support system in her brother and sister who never frown at picking up her daughter after school and offering assistance if a surgery is proving to be even more difficult than anticipated.

Although Pinnock said she used to cry when an open heart surgery was unsuccessful, she has learnt to take comfort in the fact that she tried to do her best in saving that life. But this daunting reality has not deterred her from continuing in her field.

“It is very rewarding because at the end of the day you are involved in a life-changing experience. These are patients who are sick, their quality of life is poor, they can’t work, they can’t do much some of them, and they are at home and they can’t work. But once the surgery is done, then it’s a new lease on life and they wake up alive on the table, they take the tubes out and they are ready to go,” she beamed.