YouSaid · the spoken record

Ara Darzi

lines on the record: 40
first: 2008-06-22
most recent: 2008-06-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I will take a pencil and a paper, and the reason for that is I'm constantly thinking what I could do better, and I will like to put my thoughts on paper.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love the lyrics in this, the words, and it just reminds me of my early days being sent out to be educated. If you can hear the words of being more sensible and more logical. And at the same time also reminds you that as you grow up in life, you need to be careful in what you say and how to bring people with you, otherwise you might be accused as being fanatical or even cynical.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“advice which I was pleased by and eventually asked for a defibrillator which is the thing that shocks the heart and I shocked him in the chamber and I got him back as I was shocking him I also saw the Archbishop of York doing his prayers and I shocked him and I got him back and I could see life coming back to Lord Bryan and I tell you that's the most gratifying thing you do medicine but you know that is what every NHS employee does every day just happen to be in the chamber that attracted some interest”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most eloquently he was just fantastic in the way he spoke, but having a serious go at the bill and what I've said in my opening speech, he sat down and then I remember Baroness Paisley stood up to say a few things and suddenly from, you know, I could see from the corner of my eye, Lord Brennan was not very well and he sort of collapsed and he just forget where you are. So I started getting up the benches and going and seeing what's happening and ended up doing a mouth to mouth and a heart massage to see whether I get him back. And that went on about six minutes and I wasn't getting anywhere. And there were a couple of my senior colleagues, some retired clinicians in the house which came in also to give some.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When he got over it, actually, I was very lucky to be given an orry fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering, which was one of great privilege to be given that. And that put a few smiles on his face.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They are they've been yeah, they've been, I suppose you should ask them that question, but what I see from every time I see my mum she is proud young.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next piece is Jerusalem, the soundtrack from the Charitz of Fire, which reminds me actually back to nineteen ninety four where I had to make another decision which is to move from Centin Middle Sex where I was appointed into Saint Mary's. You know, the bit about Charles Safire is that we also had one very distinguished neurologist, Sir Roger Bannister, and his contribution, also both the neurological field, but more importantly, his contribution to sports in Samaras.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and I have no problem with that. I expect, though, you can actually come up with a better policy, and I'm yet to see that. So I don't really see any issues with that. At the end of the day, it comes back to the same principles. If you have the evidence, if you have the determination, if you have the courage to put it through, and doing this review at a local level, carrying more than two thousand clinicians, doctors, nurses across the country, meeting with the patients and the public at a local level to make change happen, I've been in Whitehall for eleven months now, and I could tell you I have held all the evidence that no change could have him from Whitehall. The change has to happen locally. If I want to make a change in my practice, it's done in St. Mary's Hospital on the shop floor with the nurses and other doctors. We come to work because we want to get better. We want to deliver a better healthcare. And we need to keep up with the expectations.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't mind. You really don't mind that? Opposition parties are there, obviously. They have a very important role to play in criticise what the government is doing.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I genuinely felt he wanted a clinician to lead a review for the NHS, I without breaking any confidence. I mean, I'll try my best to convince him. I'm happy to do that as an advisor rather than as a minister. The idea of becoming a minister and being accountable in Parliament was very, very, you know, that's a big thing. And you could never take that lightly. And that is what really, I mean, I had sleepless nights thinking about this for a few days.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm sure if you ask Wendy that question, she would have said he could have done better, but the answer to that is I've tried my best to be there as much as possible and I made a every weekend we are together. During the week it's much more challenging because the workload I have but certainly every Saturday, Sunday I used to certainly in their earlier days spend time with them.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Freddy was born through a cesarean section, and I remember Wendy had her caesarean section and I had actually a list to do so. I went back to do my operating list and I came back at midday. And when I came back at midday, she looked shocked, shocked meaning. She looked very pale, very wide. Her blood pressure was dropping. And I could recognize something that's wrong here. And, you know, you have to manage these things very delicately because you don't want to interfere in the care of your own family. But at the end of the day, she had a quite a significant what we call a postpartum hemorrhage, which could be life-threatening, but she, thank goodness, she got through that and she was fine.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next one uses Maduro, which seven seconds with Nina Sherry, which reminds me of the time of my marriage and also the birth of our two children, Freddie and Nina. And it was a very touching song and I loved it and I've continued to listen to it.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've had that throughout my career as a surgeon, and I think at the end of the day what you always come back to the basics, and that's the way I drive it. I look at the evidence. Very important. You have to have the determination, and you have to have the courage. You know, on a racing track, you look forward. You don't actually look side to side. And you take people with you. You try your best to take people with you in any community that are laggards, and they will eventually catch up with you.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had another year to go, and that was the dilemma whether I take this job or not, and in actual fact, I came back and I said I will finish my training before I take the job, and they were very good because they waited for another year or eighteen months where I went back to St. Mary's as a trainee and then came back as a consultant.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, I didn't know this. I got a phone call from the medical director. And he was very charming. He was actually from Cork. He spent ten minutes telling me how excited he is in what we do in keyhole surgery, and we put his hospital on the map. He's the top dock now, this guy. And turn around and said I want to appoint you as a consultant, surgeon in this hospital. And again, I just didn't know what to make out of this. How old”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I mean, for weeks I convince the surgeon I was working with that keyhole surgeries the West, and he could recognize this. And I think very quickly we all recognize this is the tip of the iceberg. This had a huge impact on patients' recovery and well-being. So, you know, we had to maintain the momentum. And I remember doing then the first cancer operation in this hospital, and he was extremely supportive in getting me to do this until about six months into it, and I received this fascinating phone call from the medical director of the hospital.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next piece is the Pink Floyd, another brick in the wall, which reminds me of the sort of towards the end of my postgraduate training in London.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes and also learning the skill of taking people with you. Ultimately he was the boss, and he is accountable to the patient, and I managed to convince him and very gently we spent a couple of hours we did the operation together and at the end I could see him. He was excited and he had to find a way of telling me actually I think this might work in selected cases.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, at the time I had all the support I need to get from my boss, who was Professor Batter Hayes, I remember at the time in Dublin, but I think those challenges started when I moved to England because that same year I came to London. My boss then, who was, you know, the new consultant, I had to convince him that this is the way, and he was very sceptical about it all this is wrong, this is dangerous, and not just him, actually. There was a significant resistance from the surgical community.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Surgery in those days was a big cut the bigger the cut the match of the surgeon was. But the challenge then was could we do this in any way differently? And at the end of my PhD I came across groups in Europe who were talking about keyhole surgery and I just happened to be in the right place in Dublin and I remember with the professor of surgery then and a colleague from Germany who was training in Germany we did our first keyhole operation on a patient and that was absolutely striking. Within twenty four hours the patient was out of bed, the patient was eating and drinking. You can see pain free and at the same day we've done an open operation on the patient next door to them. It was like choke and cheese.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I met Wendy in those days and I said, I'm going to give it another go. Interesting, within a few months I got the job that I wanted to do and I was back into the system.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had a foreign name, you absolutely. I mean, that was their problem. I was more concerned, have I not done enough to achieve what I've achieved? And that was the day that I had to think, well, what do I do next? Do I keep applying for jobs or do I actually head off to the US”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“decided that he probably didn't speak English, and I was in shortlisted. And I once I knew that I was fine about that because I was more concerned about is this inability issue. I'm not going to solve the world's problem.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My eye came with a first, I was proud of that they were very proud that I've become a doctor. It was the first time they met Wendy. We had a nice big lunch. And then I recognized I've just climbed one ladder and I'm about to start climbing a second ladder which probably was even more challenging than the first one, which is because I decided at that stage I'm going to become a surgeon. And this song's to remind me of that first application. I applied my first job applied was to do neurosurgery, which is brain surgery. So I applied for this job and I didn't hear anything. And then I looked into it. The job was shortlisted, was interviewed, and someone else was appointed. I was taken back that I wasn't even given the chance of an interview. And I went to talk to my mentor there who was the professor of surgery there who had a huge amount of influence on my life and my career and how it's developed, and he looked into it, and he came back to me and he said to me to be fair he was very open. He said, they looked at my name and they said.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I qualified in nineteen eighty four, and it was a big day. It was actually more of a big day for my mum and dad. graduation day”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next piece of music is Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, a song which is a sad song but reminds me of after a qualified don't give up.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“not between me and her, but the issue arose about nine years later when we were getting married, and that was quite interesting. I come from an Russian Orthodox Church. She's from a Protestant, and we had to find a church in Ireland to get married and also to have even the Armenian Patriarch come and give us a blessing. But we managed it reasonably well.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But for some reason another it was closer to me. I felt it was closer to me, although there was no troubles in Dublin, but I remember when Lord Macbaton's boat blew, and that was close to me because I enjoyed being on the river, I enjoyed doing the cruising and the sailing. And I couldn't believe what this is all about. And it was no different, actually, because most of the troubles back in Iraq were between the factions of the Shiites and the Sunnis, which is what you see now on the television. And arriving in Ireland, actually it was between two factions of Christians. And that had no logic to me. I found that quite challenging.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, college was very different, and the first year was tough, but I worked it out within a year. What I need to do, medicine is not a difficult subject. I really enjoyed once I started go to hospitals and seeing patients and communicating with the patients, really seeing what it means to become a doctor.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was, you know, I spent the longest period of time where I've lived was in Ireland and I loved it. And I went to medical school there, I worked there.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they certainly did not, and there was so much to see, there was so much to do, and I developed a passion to one lake in Ireland, Loch Derg, and I used to go cruising there, sailing there. I loved doing that and stopping into these little towns very, very unique to Ireland where there's about 100, 150 people living there. There's usually two pubs in a small church. That was about...”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I loved it. And, you know, immediately I wanted to explore Ireland. And the first thing was I remember in one of our college pubs where I was told the best-looking Irish girls come from the west of Ireland. So there we are. A few of my mates make ourselves all their way to the west of Ireland. And we came across Dartinelli's and we spent that evening there. And this is where I remember the song by the Dubliners there.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next choice is a song by the Dubliners on Finnegan's Wake, which reminds me of the many, many nights, enjoyable nights that I've had in a very specific pub in the west of Ireland called Dirty Nellies.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We went to Dublin for a number of reasons firstly my parents had friends in Dublin, and more importantly they felt that, you know, it's much safer environment to have someone at the age of seventeen ending up in college there. I think it was about a year earlier that I decided, actual fact, I really want to do medicine. And it's interesting, even to this day, I can't remember what made me change my mind. And it could have been the meningitis, or knowing me now probably it was something in me that said I want to do something different than my dad did. He took it reasonably well. My mum was even delighted, so I arrived at Dublin at the age of seventeen. You know, rain, cold, miserable, this was September, October. Yes, you talked.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but even early on in the eighties it was an issue until I think the first war started and thus the time that even my parents left.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“absolutely in compared with the school I was in, which was no different than an old house really with six rooms in it. And I once I did that trip I was thirteen. I mean it was quite clear in my mind that is what I want to do.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“was amazing, this was Berkeley, and I've done all my reading about it before I went there. It was an amazing campus. I mean, the campus itself, the basket bowl, the baseball grounds, the American football, huge number of restaurants, you know, McDonald's, all sorts of things.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next mik music is Michael Fields and Tubular Bells, and it reminds me of the second decade of my life when it was my first trip to the US and we went to California to see the university that my dad went to. And Tuba Bells was the theme, and I remember first exposed to that song was in the US, actually visiting the campus.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was three weeks in hospital seeing her on a daily basis and seeing all sorts of other ill patients lying around these wards. I remember her teasing me and saying, well, we are in the business of saving lives, and why don't you think about medicine as a career? Because even in those days, you know, the way I was groomed up and brought up was more to think about engineering because of what my dad has done. So that was essentially my introduction into what medicine could do.”
2008-06-22 · Desert Island Discs · Ara Darzi · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source