Open heart surgery › Meet the team

Francis Wells: Surgeon

Francis Wells is a cardiothoracic surgeon at Papworth Hospital. He has completed over two thousand mitral valve repairs. He achieves a near 100% repair rate for fixing leaking mitral valves.

See a day in the life of Mr Wells

Betsy Evans: Registrar

Betsy is a trainee surgeon. She works with Mr Wells on all of his cases and assisted him throughout the operation, helping with the instruments and performing some of the surgery.

Andrew Klein: Anaesthetist

Andrew put the patient to sleep and kept them safe throughout the operation. He also operated the ultrasound machine, which provided detailed images of the heart.

Video: How Andrew puts patients to sleep

Nick Maggs: Perfusionist

Nick kept the patient alive while they were on bypass by operating the heart lung machine, and monitored their vital signs such as blood pressure and oxygen levels.

Video: Nick's role and a tour of his machine

Rachel Chapman: Surgical Care Practitioner

Rachel assisted the surgeons during the operation, performing simple surgical tasks such as suturing and the retraction of tissues.

Tracey Tritton: Scrub Nurse

Tracey was responsible for the surgical instruments. Before the operation she prepared them and checked they were working. During the operation she handed these instruments to the surgeon as he needed them, and kept one step ahead.

Rosa Priegue: Circulating Nurse

Rosa was scrubbed up so that she could leave the room to collect surgical instruments or any other equipment or help, should it have been needed.

Kirsty Whiting: Operating Department Practitioner (ODP)

The ODP worked in the anaesthetic room and assisted the anaesthetist with tasks such as positioning the patient and preparing the drugs.

Sarah Connolly: Trainee Anaesthetist

Sarah assisted anaesthetist Andrew with his duties.

Diane Sellar: Trainee Anaesthetist

Diane assisted perfusionist Nick with the operation of the heart lung machine.