What is your job title?
Clinical Scientist – Echocardiographer
Where do you work?
Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
What is your specialism?
Congenital heart disease, Transoesophageal echocardiography, Intensive Care echocardiography and Clinical research
Linked In?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dario-freitas-093a8614b
How did you become a Clinical Scientist?
Equivalence Route
What does your role involve?
The Department of Congenital Adult Heart Disease is my main area of work, where I am involved in the most diverse aspects, from clinical work, participation in weekly MDT and research activities. In addition to that, I participate in general transthoracic and transoesophageal clinical sessions for general outpatients and inpatients.
Since February 2019, I have been working in a research pilot study, “First-phase Ejection Fraction – Evaluation of imaging biomarkers in cardiovascular medicine” between the Departments of Cardiology at St Thomas’ Hospital and King’s College London. For this work has been awarded as the Young Investigator of the year 2019/2020 by the British Society of Echocardiography.
More recently, I am participating in the STP teaching process at Guy’s and St Thomas’ with echocardiography tutorials for second year students and will start the Higher Scientific Training (HSST) program with an interest in congenital heart disease this year.
What does a typical day look like in your role?
My working day is usually quite busy between outpatient cardiac sessions, clinics and ACHD meetings and work in the TOE cath lab. Among all this, I will need to find time to do some research and echocardiography teaching sessions with STP students!
What is the best bit of your role?
Realising that I am always learning something new from the patient, but above all, I am able to help him in many different ways.
What advice would you give to someone who is thinking of moving from a practitioner to a scientist role?
Think that, in addition to clinical work, patient care and safety should always be the most important.
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