The friend Dr. Nancy Donohoe
Surgeon, Cardiovascular Surgery of Southern Nevada
As a young girl, Nancy Donohoe spent her weekends making rounds with her father, a general surgeon at The Donahoe Clinic in Sioux Falls, S.D., where her uncle and grandfather were also physicians. At home, she played nurse to her mother, a victim of polio. From this unique childhood grew Nevada’s first female cardiovascular surgeon: a medical hero as renowned for her exceptional surgical skills as she is for her compassionate bedside manner. “I think being a woman has a huge influence on the kind of patient care I give,”
says Dr. Donohoe, a surgeon with Cardiovascular Surgery of Southern Nevada (cvsurgnv.com) and medical director of the Open Heart Surgery Program at the Heart Institute in the Summerlin Hospital. From 1994 to 2005, Donahoe was the only female heart surgeon in Nevada — and one of fewer than 50 in the country. Today, there are two in Vegas. “By and large, surgeons don’t usually have a warm, fuzzy reputation,” says Donahoe, who cares for her patients as if they were family — seriously. For instance, she asks herself questions such as,
“If this was my dad, would I want him to have this (surgery or medication), given his set of risk factors?” She says her male colleagues tell her she’s too sensitive. She says, “They’re just more pragmatic.” Donahoe spends Wednesday mornings in the office. She’s in surgery the rest of the week, and on call two weekends of the month. “Weekends can be exceedingly busy to not so bad.” The definition of “exceedingly busy”: On one memorable weekend, responding to calls at University Medical Center, Donahoe repaired a torn aorta to save the life of a car crash victim on Friday, then she turned around on Sunday to save a 19-year-old who’d been stabbed in the heart. “It’s a really good feeling,” she says, after 18 years, to be frequently greeted by former patients in the grocery store and at the mall. Discovering a familiar face on the operating table is another story: Responding to a middle-of-the-night emergency, Donahoe was rushing into the hospital when she saw in the waiting room a face she knew well from her favorite pizza place. The woman told Donahoe: I think you’re here to take care of my dad. Her father was suffering a ruptured abdominal aneurism. “It adds a bit of stress when you know the patient and the family,” says Donahoe. “But, you just can’t panic.” Today, Donahoe’s favorite pizza guy is flipping pies again. After saving his life, Donahoe did him one better: To celebrate the Heart Institute’s 500th heart surgery, the heart doc threw a party for her staff at his restaurant. No doubt that got his ticker beating. — Chantal Corcoran
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