Tirone David

Location: Ontario | Profession: Doctor

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Tirone David 1944

Tirone David was born in a small town in southern Brazil. In his teens, he volunteered alongside the Nobel Laureate humanitarian Albert Schweitzer in Africa, as well as working on a kibbutz in Israel. After interning at medical centres in the US, he came to Canada, where he became a professor at the University of Toronto and the head of cardiovascular surgery at Toronto General Hospital. He is a recipient of both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada.

Tirone David 2005

What They Said

The Experiences of a Med Student:

In 1970, at 26 years of age, David began interning at the Downstate Medical Centre in Brooklyn, part of the University of New York. By the time he transferred to the Cleveland Clinic the following year, he had already decided to concentrate on heart surgery. He explains that as a student progresses through medical training, the demands become more particular. Now as then, a large part of the entrance requirements are academic. MCATs and entry exams are the standards one needs to meet in order to be accepted. But as studies continue and one eventually decides upon an area of interest, the marks themselves matter less while more emphasis is placed on individual innovation and curiosity.

"I have always been inquisitive," he says. "In medical school I started asking questions. By the time I finished my training I had about a thousand questions... So you have one or two pertinent questions and you ask your mentors, 'What's the answer?' 'I don't know.' And the books don't answer it so you go and find out either by doing trials or in labs." The same curiosity that spurred Leonardo is still required today, though for narrower pursuits.

Dr. David spent four years in Cleveland. In those days, the Clinic was one of the few places that dealt with a high number of heart surgery cases. But he still felt limited. Surgically, they only performed "one type of operation". David was restless: he wanted to experiment with different techniques.

One noteworthy thing happened during that period: he met his future wife. "She was a nurse," he says, smiling. "If you live in a hospital and work 36 of every 48, who else are you going to meet but nurses and doctors?"