Burke says a good mind does not mean he will be a good minister

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was the first time in forty-five years that he had not undergone surgery for a month. It made it impossible for him to catch the COVID-19 disease he had with his family. Then he returned to the hall a little nervous. “I was horrified if I forgot. But it turns out that it can’t be forgotten in a month’s time,” Burke told broker Eileen Sirna.

Since then, he has returned to the rhythm of his operations. “I’ve been working ever since,” said Burke, 73. How long can you practice this difficult profession? “He’s totally individual. There are heart surgeons who say at the age of 60 that the disease is over, but I know exceptions from the United States that also had the surgery at the age of 80,” Burke said.

He confessed that he had asked his student, Professor Evan Neto, to inform him of the necessity to stop work. According to Burke, in general, a brilliant surgeon should not spoil his reputation at the end of his career.

He used to say that the hardest operation is yet to come, because it will be the last before his retirement, but that is no longer the case. The hardest thing was when his friends – actors Zlata Adamowska and Peter ětpánek – convinced him to play Ordinace v růže zahradu, in which he had to pretend he was working on the human heart, even though there was no human heart. “So now I say I had the most difficult surgery behind me: when Petr Štěpánek and I performed heart surgery on the beef in the chain.”

Burke is said to have gotten used to the fact that at the end of June he will end up as head of the Heart Center at the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague (IKEM), from where he was dismissed by the hospital administration. . But I have to apologize to the patients because I arranged so many things for them, and I’m not going to be able to do that now. The patients will have to get used to the fact that it will be different, ”Burke said.

Last April, Pirk, along with ten other leading medical capabilities, caused an uproar, saying that strict measures to combat the Coronavirus could have dangerous impacts on human health and the economy. He does not regret signing it under the invitation, he will attach it again.

“The statement was in effect in April 2020, when it was already so. But I might have said in the summer that the autumn wave will definitely come. In addition, I thought it would be with a flu pandemic. Fortunately, this did not happen,” Burke said. Perform an analysis of the extent of covid-19’s involvement in mortality and the impact of neglected care for other fatal diseases.

Recently, in an interview with Novinky.cz, he reiterated that the government is not managing the pandemic, and blamed the lack of professionalism of the MeSES group, whose central character Petr Smejkal does not have a degree in epidemiology, according to Burke. However, Burke received criticism from some of his colleagues for his comments on the Coronavirus.

“Expressing yourself and being in control of something else is different. When asked, I expressed my opinion, but I never forced anyone to follow my opinion. This is a fundamental difference,” Burke said, who considers that the Czech Republic has the longest closed schools in Europe is a crime against children.

Jan Berk (73) Cardiac surgeon Jan Burke was born in Prague and, like the previous three generations, started medicine. After graduation, he started working at Nymburk Hospital and two years later he joined IKEM, where he had been working without interruption for 46 years. Since 1996, he has been President of IKEM Cardiocentre, which expired in June 2021. He completed his training in the United States and Denmark. He has performed more than seven thousand surgeries and three hundred transplants. In 1997, he was named the best healthcare manager. Since 2013, he has been a member of the Learners’ Association in the Czech Republic. He is a college teacher, but he also lectures in high schools, seminars or nursing homes. He runs daily and enjoys traveling and reading.