Working Life: Dr Dermot McCaffrey, consultant cardiologist, Beacon Hospital

6.40am

I enjoy jogging and recently completed my first Dublin City marathon. I spent 15 years in Australia and conditions there were more conducive to a healthy lifestyle so you have to work harder at it here with our weather conditions.

My first task on arrival at the Beacon Hospital is to review inpatients and see what kind of night they had with a handover from the nightshift nursing team.

9am

I have a coffee and quick review of the paper before my outpatient clinic. My main areas of interest are heart failure, hypertension and atrial fibrillation so GPs refer patients with breathlessness, chest pain, high blood pressure or palpitations for review.

12.30pm

After clinic, I head back to the ward to check any outstanding test results and review any patients that have come in via casualty as they need to be seen promptly.

2pm

After lunch, I have a patient list in the cardiac cath lab for coronary angiograms. This is a procedure where I inject iodine contrast (dye) down patients coronary arteries via a small artery in their wrist. While the contrast is in their arteries, I take rapid X-rays looking for any blockages that may need stenting or bypass surgery to relieve their chest pain.

5pm

I report on echo tests which are ultrasounds of patient’s hearts and then do a final ward round to ensure patients are well before taking time for some research and paperwork.

I am a judge for ”Pumped Up”, an Irish Heart Foundation/Federation of Irish Sport/Bayer initiative that aims to make school kids more health aware by encouraging them to make 90-second videos around heart health, smoking or obesity. All details are on www.pumped.ie. As chair of the IHF heart failure group, I actively promote heart health as prevention is the best cure!

7.30pm

I get home in time for dinner and hopefully get to spend some quality time with my youngest daughter Isolt, have a brief chat with my 17-year-old daughter Saibh and 15-year-old son Derry as they are both doing school exams this year. After that, some chill out time with my ever-loving wife Siobhán.

The human contact in this job makes the day fly by and keeps each day novel.