Dubai : Dr Abrar Khan is the man behind the UAE's first and only transplant centre and the writer of the country's law for organ donation and brain death.
It is due to his efforts that patients in the UAE in need of organ transplants no longer have to travel overseas, but instead can receive treatment at home with the support of their families at the Cleveland Clinic in Shaikh Khalifa Medical City in Abu Dhabi.
Khan, the much accomplished Director and Senior Consultant of the Transplantation Programme and Hepatobiliary Surgery at the clinic, oversaw its establishment from the ground up and, upon completion, successfully performed the country's first two kidney transplants in 2008.
With an eight-page-long resume, four languages, a pilot's licence, a Master's of Philosophy and just over 15 authored and co-authored publications under his belt, Khan decided it was time for him to go back to school. But what could he possibly have left to learn?
Mental shift
Khan recently graduated with distinction at the top of his Executive MBA class from the Dubai-London Centre at London Business School. As odd as it may seem for a surgeon to go from medicine to business, Khan says he did it because of a lack of skill sets.
"Medical school and surgical training teaches you to think in a certain way, usually to serve your patient and attend to their needs above all," said Khan. However, in pursuit of serving a greater number of patients, he found the one-to-one doctor-patient relationship shifted to an affair with institutions, operations and finances.
"When I made that mental leap I realised that in order to serve the greatest number of patients I would have to change the way I think," he said. "While an MBA will not change your personality, I can certainly give you the tools to change the way you think about how hospitals should work," added Khan.
Asked to lead the development of yet another transplant programme, this time in the US, Khan found he needed the tools to manage and develop people and processes, which put him on the road to school.
Not short on grey cells, Khan said the biggest challenge of the MBA was balancing work, study and time with family.
"For two years I essentially had no social life," said Khan. "My schedule consisted of work in the mornings, dinner and homework with the kids then a night of studying until about 2am, this was daily," he added.
Raison d'etre
However, Khan's discipline paid off as he achieved what he set out to do and in the process, he said, gained a different way of looking at the world and how it works.
With a fresh perspective, yet retaining his surgical eye for fixing and healing; Khan believes the most important thing in need of fixing in the world is the necessity for people, professionals and institutions to remember their reason for existing.
"We can't forget that the main reason for hospitals are to take care of the sick and make them better to get them back into society as productive citizens," said Khan. "When hospitals forget that they get in trouble and this principle is true for all aspects of life."
