She was the first woman in Europe to perform an artificial heart implant on a patient and is now planning to open her own heart clinic. Dilek Gürsoy talks about why you must sometimes go your own way — and how doing so can be fun.

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I often communicate in Turkish and German via social media when posting about my work on LinkedIn. Not many people in my profession do that. People think that others do it for me, but I write it myself when travelling home on the tram, for example. I publish it from the heart without overthinking. I've done countless operations and I'm directly involved, so if I don't tell people about it, who will?

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I was on the FORBES cover, have sat at a table together with Markus Lanz, and shook Angela Merkel's hand. I've also written a book (Ich stehe hier, weil ich gut bin, Eden Books). Yet, I don't do this for myself but because I want to convincepeople that there needs to be an alternative to heart transplants.

I want to be able to say to my patients: “Okay, we'll get you an artificial heart now, implant it and from tomorrow you can continue your life as normal”, so that nobody must sit and wait for their loved ones to die.

But we still haven't developed a system that works in the long term; it's always just a stopgap, a temporary solution.

We have the potential to change this, especially in Germany. The best artificial heart engineers are trained in Aachen, but German projects were stopped due to a lack of funding. The Swedes are developing their own artificial heart, the French are working on two different systems, the Americans have several solutions in the pipeline and an Australian colleague will soon launch an excellent artificial heart onto the market — all while Germany stands still.

We are modest, shy, and not good at marketing. We focus predominantly on titles and positions. Politicians are more likely to listen to a president of the specialist society rather than Dr Dilek Gürsoy. We have been promoting heart transplants since 1967. Surely, we cannot still be talking about organ donation a hundred years from now. I just can't get my head around it. We shoot people to the moon, develop artificial intelligence, but fail to develop a real artificial heart?

Germany likes to follow the tried and tested route, but you can't solve everything by looking backwards. There are several traditional paths into the industry: assistant doctor, specialist, senior doctor, senior consultant, chief physician, but this mustn't be the case, not even in the hierarchical working world of medicine. I am the best example of this. I'm not a habilitated university professor nor am I permanently employed at a university and yet I do much more as a fee-based doctor in my field than others do in Germany.

I'm just ahead of my time. That's why nobody in Germany wanted to give me a managerial position even though I'm a good surgeon. Of course, I could have moved to Turkey and earned a lot of money, but I wanted to do it here. So, I said to myself: “If the system won't offer you a place, then you'll create your own place”. Sometimes it's that simple.

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I had the idea to open my own clinic for artificial heart therapy back in 2018, but it had to grow first. I've been working intensively on the foundation for two years. The company already exists, I already have the building, now it's about raising money. I have enough investors.

They see my potential, but I'm still waiting as I prefer to try it on my own with the help of banks and donations.

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Of course I could take the quicker, easier route. But I'm sure it will all come together just as things often have during my life. I've never acted in a particularly calculated manner; I've just done what I enjoy doing and worked with the people that I enjoy working with. I would like to pass this advice onto young people: Focus on what you are good at and stay smart and relaxed. I've gotten further with that than many others have.'

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