Oscar Traynor Talks Transplant

Surgeons’ Lives - Stuff that Matters

Professor Oscar Traynor is currently the Director of International Surgical Training Programs at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

He was born and grew up in Dublin and having originally wanted to be an airline pilot, he found that he was unexpectedly unable to pursue this career and so entered medical school to "see what I was like". He was soon sufficiently mesmerized by Medicine to pursue a career in Surgery.

As part of his training, he spent a year in London, where he encountered the late Professor Leslie Blumgart, who became a fiercely, loyal mentor and ultimately good friend throughout his entire career.

So it was that Oscar decided to pursue the relatively new specialty of liver surgery and he spent another year in fellowship with Professor Henri Bismuth in Paris.

Returning to Dublin in 1987 he started not only his consultant career but also a long journey to create a liver transplant program for the country of Ireland. Naturally this was not without some bumps in the road but over the next quarter century it turned into the success story it is today.

During the same timeframe, he developed an interest in surgical training and became Dean of Postgraduate Surgical Training at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He held this post for 23 years during which, he was responsible for the introduction of formal skills lab training through simulation and the development of human factors training.

In a fascinating interview, he has much to say about the challenges of creating a new program and the need for partnership and collaboration to achieve success.

His grandfather, after whom he was named, was a famous and prominent politician in the early 20th century in Ireland and would certainly look on the achievements of the 21st-century Oscar with both fascination and pride.

Don't forget, if you prefer to watch these interviews, the entire series is available on YouTube.

https://www.rcsi.com/dublin/news-and-events/news/news-article/2021/10/professor-oscar-traynor-awarded-honorary-fellowship-of-american-college-of-surgeons

https://www.linkedin.com/in/oscar-traynor-82a34225/?originalSubdomain=ie

https://www.rcsi.com/people/profile/otraynor