President Russell M. Nelson, a pioneering heart surgeon, donated his medical journals — the “tangible tracks” of his surgical career — to the University of Utah on Wednesday, Aug. 30.
“The story behind this event was 80 years in the making,” said the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “That long ago, I was accepted for admission to the University of Utah School of Medicine.”
During a special meeting in the Church Administration Building, President Nelson and his wife, Sister Wendy Nelson, met with doctors and administrators from the University of Utah — where he graduated from medical school in August of 1947. He was 22 years old.
“I am deeply grateful for the important role the University of Utah played in my education and surgical career,” he said. “Wendy and I are very pleased to donate these valuable records to the University of Utah.”
President Nelson was joined in the presentation by Elder Dale G. Renlund, a cardiologist who now serves in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; University of Utah President Taylor Randall; University of Utah Board of Trustees Vice Chair Katie Eccles; Dr. Michael Good; Catherine Soehner; Heidi Woodbury; Dr. Sam Finlayson; and Dr. Craig Selzman — who holds the Dr. Russell M. Nelson and Dantzel W. Nelson presidential endowed chair in cardiothoracic surgery.”
President Randall called it “a historic day” for the university to have “perhaps our most distinguished alumnus donate such a remarkable volume of records.”
He said the volumes reveal “incredible inventiveness” and “the history of cardiothoracic surgery with many, many, many firsts.”
“More than anything, though, I hope as we appropriately allow individuals to study your records, they will see how you were inspired,” said President Randall to President Nelson. “You are not only a great healer of people, but you have been a great healer of souls.”
President Nelson’s medical career
After graduating from the University of Utah, President Nelson and his late wife, Sister Dantzel Nelson, traveled to the University of Minnesota, where he participated in an internship and surgical residency. In Minnesota he worked on the research team that developed the heart-lung machine that supported the first open-heart surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass. He also served the Medical Corps of the United States Army for two years during the Korean War and participated in the Harvard surgical service at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, before completing his Ph.D. in Minneapolis in June of 1954.
In 1955, President Nelson and his family returned to Salt Lake City, where he was appointed as an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Utah by Dr. Philip B. Price. While working in that role, President Nelson built his own heart-lung bypass machine.
“After much laboratory research and with Dr. Price’s great encouragement, I performed Utah’s first open-heart surgery employing a heart-lung machine in November 1955,” said President Nelson.
He noted that whenever a surgical operation is done in a major hospital, a report of that operation is dictated by the surgeon.
“I kept copies of all my operative records from 1954 until 1984, when I was called to devote full-time service as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” said President Nelson. “As a matter of fact, my final operation was done a year after that — in China [on Chinese opera star Fang Rongxiang].”
The medical patient operative records, now bound in 35 volumes, cover his 30 years of professional service. Included in the gift are reprints of more than 100 scientific publications, his Ph.D. thesis, his current curriculum vitae and a digitized version of all the documents. He also included a list of the cardiovascular and thoracic surgical residents trained at University of Utah-affiliated hospitals during his term as director of the residency program.
“I am sure that the keepers of these records will be mindful of the confidential relationships between doctors and their patients. Therefore, these reports can be made available on an as-needed basis.”
In total during his career, President Nelson performed about 7,000 surgical operations.
University of Utah School of Medicine
The University of Utah School of Medicine was founded in 1905 with just 14 students, 16 professors and an annual budget of just $10,000, said Dr. Finlayson, the interim dean of the university’s Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine. “Of course, over the decades the program has grown in reputation and size.”
Noting that President Nelson began his medical career at a time when many believed “touching the human heart would make it stop,” Dr. Finlayson called the Church leader a trail blazer of open-heart surgery who pioneered the heart-lung machine — becoming the first surgeon to perform open-heart surgery in Utah using this innovative technology.
“President Nelson, thank you for all that you have done to advance health care through innovation and education — in our institution and across our state, our country and indeed the world.”
Dr. Selzman also spoke of President Nelson’s pioneering efforts, marveling that during his first surgery using the heart-lung machine to fix a hole in the patient’s heart, the cardiopulmonary bypass time was only six minutes — something that surgeons today take 45 to 60 minutes to accomplish.
President Nelson “opened up the heart, closed the hole, closed the heart, got off the machine in six minutes. So he truly was a master surgeon on top of everything else,” Dr. Selzman said.
“We were scared to death,” added President Nelson, reflecting on that historic surgery.
Dr. Selzman said he wears a pin that represents the division of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Utah.
The pin includes three mission pillars — to heal, to discover and to learn. At the bottom of the pin are three initials — RMN. The pin is a tribute to President Russell M. Nelson. “RMN is the foundation of our ethos of what we teach to our trainees, to our faculty,” Dr. Selzman said. “I cannot live up to the RMN ethos. But I try.”
He recalled a recent operation in which as he started a difficult surgery, he discovered a heart with one of the worst defects he has ever seen. Thinking of the RMN ethos, his team persevered through the very demanding procedure that lasted until 3 a.m. “RMN is always there,” he said. “RMN taught us to focus, … do the best we can.”
Then looking at President Nelson, he added, “You live in us every single day that we do our work.”
Of President Nelson’s donated medical records, Dr. Selzman said, “These are priceless manuscripts for us.”
Eccles thanked President Nelson for his “invaluable gift” documenting his “remarkable career of leadership within our community and across the world.”
“This documentation of your extensive research and your illustrious career is of great importance to the history and the progression of our understanding of cardiology and heart procedures,” she said. And just as important, she added, it “memorializes a remarkable life — a life of commitment to expanding knowledge and serving your fellow man.”
