Jamaican medical trailblazer trained in Toronto
November 20, 2019
Overcoming childhood illness, Dr. Racquel Gordon is a Jamaican medical trailblazer as the first female Interventional Cardiologist.
Afflicted with rheumatic fever as a child meant she had to receive antibiotics regularly at the local hospital where she was once hospitalized for five weeks because of the inflammatory disease.
Gordon’s mother -- Violet Rose-Gordon -- is a surgical nurse at Andrews Memorial Hospital and her father died of internal bleeding after heart surgery when she was two years old.
“I had lots of exposure to the health field, so I knew at a very young age what my career goal was,” said the medical practitioner who was born and raised in rural St. Andrew. “I always wanted to be a doctor.”
Gordon settled on a specialty after her second year in medical school at the University of the West Indies.
“When I started to learn about cardiology, I thought it was so simple to understand compared to, let’s say, neurology,” she pointed out. “After I started specializing in internal medicine, I knew that cardiology was going to be my specialty.”
After graduating from medical school in 2014, Gordon – with support from the G. Raymond Chang Fellowship and the Jamaican government – was offered a two-year cardiology fellowship at the University of Toronto.
She was unable to complete the second year because of a lack of funding.
“I went to Canada to do General Cardiology and Intervention was part of the rotation,” Gordon said. “After the first-year, I decided I was going to do Interventional Cardiology, but I had to return home because I was unable to acquire funding then to do the second year.”
In 2005, Chang – who died five years ago – made a substantial financial donation that helped launch a fellowship program for Caribbean physicians. The program was led by Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong, the co-founder of the Centre for Excellence in Education and Practice of General Internal Medicine, who was instrumental in championing opportunities for Caribbean doctors to train at the University Health Network (UHN) for specific jobs back in their homelands. His contribution has had a positive multiplier effect on Jamaica’s health care system.
Ho Ping Kong, who developed highly regarded clinical teaching units and established the importance of clinical teaching, retired last year.
More than 90 per cent of the cardiologists in Jamaica have been trained in Canada, mainly because of him.
“Though this man doesn’t live in Jamaica, his impact on our health care system is enormous,” said Gordon. “He’s such a humble soul and great teacher who loves to impart his knowledge.”
After 18 months as an Internist/Cardiologist at May Pen Hospital, Gordon returned to UHN in July 2018 to complete the Interventional Cardiology Fellowship. She was the only female in the program that included two Canadians and a British national.
Last November, she was part of a ground-breaking team that used Intravascular Lithotripsy for the first time in North America to treat a patient with advanced cardiovascular disease. The procedure breaks up calcium that has formed in the blockage, allowing for proper stent placement and blood flow.
Dr. Racquel Gordon assists Dr. Vlad Dzavik with the use of intravascular lithotripsy to treat a patient with advanced cardiovascular disease in a North American first at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (Photo contributed by UHN)
Performed at Toronto General Hospital’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, the technology -- using sonic pressure waves -- is an approach that’s similar to how physicians tackle and treat kidney stones which are made up of calcium.
“This technology will become very useful in the near future,” predicts Gordon. “Sometimes we use rotor ablation which is almost like chipping away at the calcium. That procedure is a bit more challenging and the risk is a little greater than using a shock wave, particularly in a very tortuous vessel where the complications can be greater.”
With her special training and skill, Gordon knew there was a greater demand for her services in Jamaica.
“Canadians, I found, are warm and welcoming,” she said. “I was very well situated in Toronto in that I lived downtown where I had access to all the amenities I wanted at convenient times. If I needed to live somewhere else, it would be Canada. But, I don’t like the cold and home is home. I have my family here and I wanted to contribute to Jamaica because the need is so great here.”
Gordon is one of three Intervention Cardiologists in Jamaica’s public health care system. The others are Noel Crooks and Victor Elliott who were also trained in Canada. The trio is assigned to the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI).
Her return home coincided with the launch last May of Jamaica’s first Interventional Suite at UHWI that has state-of-the-art equipment that enables specialist clinicians to perform minimally invasive tests and procedures to diagnose and treat some of the most complex cardiac cases and interventional patients.
“It has the latest Phillips Allura system that allows us to do Interventional Radiology, Pacemaker & Cardiac Device Implantation and Electrophysiology Studies which will come on stream soon,” Gordon added. “It’s a multi-faceted suite that I am proud to be working in. It’s really a big leap when you think where we are coming from in terms of what we had before this was unveiled.”
Coronary Care units are very busy, especially in places where qualified staff members are limited.
“Each of us deal with about five to eight cases a day which is a lot,” said Gordon. “In addition, we have to do Echocardiograms and ward round duties and we are all associate lectures teaching medical students. Though the three of us alternate, it seems that we are on call all the time.”
