‘It is my dream to empower people’

You are the first cardiologist in the Netherlands to put women’s hearts on the map. How did that happen?

“When I had been a successful cardiologist with a PhD for twenty years, I heard the results of a study done on women at a cardiology conference in the United States. That was in 2003. I went to that convention because then-First Lady Laura Bush was going to speak there. I always wanted to hear it live. But I can hardly remember anything about her speech, because on the spot I was captivated by the lecture about the woman’s heart. At the time, I was still head of cardiac care at the university hospital in Leiden, and I realized that we checked all female patients carefully before they were allowed to go home, but not in the right way! From then on, it was my mission to draw attention to this.”

We are now almost twenty years later. What about the consciousness of the woman’s heart?

“The scientific evidence for the woman’s heart is obvious and irrefutable, but the textbooks are still unadjusted. And the pace at the cardiologists has to increase, because it is all painfully slow. GPs are way ahead of cardiologists. A heart attack develops differently in men and women. In men the large coronary arteries calcify, in women the small capillaries that are not visible on a scan stiffen. As a result, women are sent home with the announcement that their vessels are clean and ‘so’ nothing is wrong, even if they have serious complaints that indicate heart problems – complaints that are also different from men. Think of unexplained dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath or shortness of breath after moderate exercise, depressed feelings and extreme fatigue. Complaints that are all too often attributed to too much stress, which prevents women from getting the advice and care they need. In addition, women-specific risk factors play a major role in the development of cardiovascular disease before the menopause. This concerns high blood pressure during pregnancy, pregnancy sugar or the HELPP syndrome (hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes and low platelets, ed.).”

Does something similar apply when it comes to people of color?

“That problem is much more complex. These people still have high blood pressure, diabetes, etc., but the impact of that is much greater. A black person with the same high blood pressure as a white person has a four times greater risk of cardiovascular disease. Hindus and Chinese with diabetes have the same increased risk. Their ethnicity thus has an additional negative impact on conventional risk factors. In addition, it is my experience that a large proportion of poorly educated people with a migration background make poor use of care out of ignorance. They don’t know what they are entitled to, they think they are bothering doctors with their concerns, and when they do come, they often only speak their mother tongue and a child comes along as a translator. Because of the language barrier, I can’t really explain why I give which medicines and how they should use them. So what do you often see: they stop taking it when they experience side effects. And because you are not allowed to give medicine for more than a month, there are people who think they will get a cure. And they don’t come back after the last pill for a new supply.”

How did you manage to penetrate the white male bastion of medical specialists as a black woman?

“I have never dealt with a glass ceiling or with discrimination. That is not to say that these things do not exist, but I have not experienced them myself. I was only interested in one thing: becoming the best doctor for all heart patients who entrusted their lives to me. No effort was too much for that. At the end of the afternoon my heels collapsed – I’ve always worn high heels until I got too much trouble – especially if I had also had an intensive night shift. But this is what I wanted. I am driven, honest and reliable, and I had all the competences for the responsibilities I carried. There was nothing to argue with.”

Yet you were fired as head of cardiac care.

“The argument was that I couldn’t grow into that position, but in reality there was a power conflict where my supervisor wasn’t protecting me. I’ve been angry for a year. After that, my sobriety and forgiveness prevailed. In retrospect, you can say that time and energy were released to become the brilliant heart failure specialist who developed the assisted heart: a pump for people who have been rejected for a heart transplant due to additional illnesses, but who do need a heart. By the way, the support heart was so successful that it has now been included in the basic insurance.”

How did your parents influence your drive and tenacity?

“We were raised with the motto that you should not squander your talent. Our parents taught us two things: don’t use your elbows, use your talent, and: honesty lasts the longest. My mother went to college after the birth of her eighth child. She was 43 years old at the time and wanted to go into education. She eventually became deputy headmaster of an elementary school. My father studied in the evenings and rose to become Chief Inspector of the Police; he could not realize his dream of becoming a doctor due to lack of money. He was therefore deeply moved when he saw me in the hospital in my white doctor’s coat.”

During your working life you have regularly taught at the Weekend School, a kind of Sunday school for children from disadvantaged neighborhoods. What did you tell them?

“I always took them to the hospital and had them talk to everyone there, from the security guard to the nurses in the cardiac ward and the patients. And I said, ‘Go chase your dream! Use your talents and realize: every tree was small before.’ I say to young people with an ethnic background: ‘It is not your color that determines where you go. It’s your focus, your integrity, your talent. If one door stays closed, knock on the next. Maybe only the tenth door opens, but there’s always a door somewhere that opens. Keep believing in yourself, chase your dream, but only do things because you want to.’”

You also regularly give lectures to top women. What do you say to them?

“Due to the great success of the support heart, I have learned to claim my credits. Too often you see the women doing the work, and the men – and some women, for that matter – taking the credit. But I myself want the credit for my own merits, and I also propagate that principle in those lectures. You can let people share in your success, but don’t let anyone show off your feathers.”

You are now retired, but you are still very active in society.

“I’ll come before God’s throne one day, and then I’ll have to tell you what I’ve done with my talents. I don’t want to be a tree under which nothing grows, and that’s why I’ve always encouraged everyone to become who they want to be. What kind of person are you, that’s what matters. That intangible footprint is the most important thing you can leave behind. I consider it a great honor that I am still being asked to speak. My dream is to empower people, to make them better.”

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Harriette Verwey (Paramaribo, 1951) specialized as a cardiologist in 1984. From 1985 to 2017 she worked as a member of the heart transplant team at the LUMC-Erasmus MC. Between 1995 and 2003 she was chief of cardiac care. She has been an ambassador for the women’s heart since 2003. In 2010, she placed the first ‘assisted heart’ in a patient who had been rejected for a heart transplant. In 2010 she was honored with a Presidents Award by EZVN (Ethnic Business Women in the Netherlands) and in 2017 she was knighted as Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau. Harriette Verwey is single.

This article previously appeared in Plus Magazine January 2022. Want to subscribe to the magazine? You can do that in an instant!