How research kept Tim alive

Tim McMahon is passionate about patient care and heart research, with good reason - it saved his life.

The 37-year-old father of two is a Nurse Educator at Caboolture Hospital’s Emergency Department and a congenital heart disease survivor.

Diagnosed with aortic stenosis at 13 months old while living in Mackay, Tim had multiple surgeries at The Prince Charles Hospital.

By eight, he was fighting for life again with endocarditis, having multiple emergency open-heart surgeries, kidney failure, weeks in intensive care, bacterial infection and had four chest openings in 27-hours.

Today Tim is thriving and those experiences inspired his career in nursing with Metro North at The Prince Charles Hospital (TPCH) and Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH).

Now supporting the training and development of more than 270 front-line emergency staff, the Kippa-Ring resident credits medical advances with saving his life.

As a youngster Tim slept more than his older brother and sister. "I’d fall asleep in random spots,” he said.

“I had a check-up. They listened to my heart and found I had a murmur … that’s how they diagnosed it.’

Congenital heart defects are the most common birth defects in the world. Eight children in Australia are born with them every day.

However, Tim’s story shows the impact of work by Prince Charles Hospital Foundation (aka The Common Good) in prevention, research and long-term care for those with heart disease.

“I’m definitely lucky I had the treatment. It could have gone the wrong way for me many times,” said Tim, who has been with the Caboolture team four years.

“The last open heart surgery I had almost two decades ago, they thought I had a stroke and wasn’t going to be the same. But I turned out alright!

Following last month’s Heart Week, Tim’s advice is: “Make sure you get checkups. Get your heart listened to, cholesterol checked…

“It’s not necessarily you that might be affected by a heart condition, it might be someone else you love or know.

“Unfortunately, I’ve known children who didn’t survive past a couple of months or to their 20th birthdays.”

Tim’s heart issues and time in hospital enable him to understand what patients face.

His nursing career started at Redcliffe Hospital’s Rehabilitation Unit, then seven years at TPCH emergency department, a year at RBWH and now Caboolture.

He told TPCH Foundation in four years at Caboolture he has “redesigned the advanced life support program and the directorate, improved access to paediatric-specific training and aligned educational outcomes”.

“Research has kept me alive,” he said, “without research children with congenital heart disease traditionally died. We are now living long lives.”