ABU DHABI// It’s 5am, but pressing the snooze button on the alarm is not an option for Dr Tomislav Mihaljevic.
The 51-year-old newly appointed chief executive of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi starts his days early. His busy schedule is a series of meetings, clinical huddles, council sessions, tours of the hospital and checking on the health of patients.
Running a hospital with a staff of 3,000 from 62 countries is no mean feat, especially as Dr Mihaljevic combines his official duties with his responsibilities as a heart surgeon. The doctor specialises in minimally invasive surgery and robotic heart surgery.
“Both being a surgeon and chief executive are very challenging roles and a combination of these is even more challenging. For me it would be very difficult to envision that I could run a hospital effectively without knowing what hospital life is really like,” said Dr Mihaljevic.
The surgeon attended medical school in his native Croatia and received cardiac surgery training in Switzerland.
He moved to the United States more than 20 years ago to work in general surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard University, Boston, before joining the Cleveland Clinic, where he worked as a heart surgeon in the department of thoracic and cardio vascular surgery.
He moved to CCAD in 2011 as chief of staff and chief of the heart and vascular institute.
Around 30,000 patients from 26 countries have been treated at CCAD since it opened its doors in May this year. More than 1,600 operations and procedures have been performed.
“Since opening our doors we have evolved very quickly. Complex and challenging procedures that have never been done in the region before, like robotic valve operations, robotic bypass surgery, endoscopic removal of colon cancer are being performed here,” said Dr Mihaljevic.
arizvi2@thenational.ae
