Benjamin J. Conway, MD

My favorite part of work is sitting down and talking with people about their disease. I put a lot of effort into explaining things in intuitive ways, in lay terms, about how these diseases work. Some are pretty difficult to explain. But I think it’s important that people understand their disease – what we’re doing when we make an intervention, what we’re trying to accomplish and frankly what we’re not able to accomplish sometimes. The explanations put people more in a position of feeling in control, and they actually do better with their disease when they understand it. What motivates me is that there are people out there confronting a disease that never rests. For all the dramatic things that make headlines in the world of cardiology, there is no substitute for the day-to-day interventions – diet, medication and activity – that really are most important.