Christiaan Barnard - Career

Career

Barnard did his internship and residency at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, after which he worked as a general practitioner in Ceres, a rural town in the Cape Province. In 1951, he returned to Cape Town where he worked at the City Hospital as a Senior Resident Medical Officer, and in the Department of Medicine at the Groote Schuur Hospital as a registrar. He completed his Masters degree, receiving Master of Medicine in 1953 from the University of Cape Town. In the same year he obtained a doctorate in medicine (MD) from the same university for a dissertation entitled "The treatment of tuberculous meningitis".

In 1956, he received a two-year scholarship for postgraduate training in cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States. It was during this time that Barnard first became acquainted with Norman Shumway, who did much of the pioneering research leading to the first human heart transplant. In 1958 he received a Master of Science in Surgery for a thesis entitled, "The aortic valve – problems in the fabrication and testing of a prosthetic valve". The same year he was awarded Doctor of Philosophy degree for his dissertation entitled "The aetiology of congenital intestinal atresia". Barnard described the two years he spent in the US as "the most fascinating time in my life."

Upon returning to South Africa in 1958, Barnard was appointed cardiothoracic surgeon at the Groote Schuur Hospital, establishing the hospital's first heart unit. He was promoted to full-time lecturer and Director of Surgical Research at the University of Cape Town. Three years later he was appointed Head of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the teaching hospitals of the University of Cape Town. He rose to the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Cape Town in 1962. Barnard's younger brother Marius, who also studied medicine, eventually became Barnard's right-hand man at the department of Cardiac Surgery. Over time, Barnard became known as a brilliant surgeon with many contributions to the treatment of cardiac diseases, such as the Tetralogy of Fallot and Ebstein's anomaly. He was promoted to Professor of Surgical Science in the Department of Surgery at the University of Cape Town in 1972. Among the many awards he received over the years, he was named Professor Emeritus in 1984.