Cardiology is a male-dominated field. [Laughs] There are a lot of self-assured, persuasive men in this field. They’re lightning fast and medically excellent. I don’t see myself that way. I’m currently subspecialising in electrophysiology, not yet fully confident in the cath lab, and I’m very cautious. I’m softer and more soft-spoken. I’m a sensitive person. If someone says something unkind, or I do something wrong, I can really dwell on it. I used to be very timid and too shy to speak much. It might have something to do with my Asian roots, but I’m not sure – I’ve never really analysed myself that closely. As a med student I was told, “You need to make yourself more visible, you need to speak up.” It helps to be bold; I had to rely more on hard work. I’m less timid now. I’ve been here since 2015, I know everyone well, and I feel comfortable engaging in discussions. If I’m somewhere else, it still feels a bit intimidating.
This does mean I can relate more to young med students and PhD candidates. Maybe the quieter ones are just afraid. I try to instil confidence in my junior colleagues. As for patients, they sometimes come in angry, but I try to look past that. Most are simply scared. If I can make them feel heard and, as they’re leaving, they ask if they can come back to see me, I’m happy. That’s where my strength lies.
Are you happy? Yes, I’m very happy. I have lovely children and I’m very grateful to have been given the opportunity to grow up in the Netherlands. I’ve been able to do everything I wanted. I’ve become a doctor here, which never would’ve been possible in Vietnam, even just financially. It pains me to see all asylum seekers being lumped together now. The world is harder than it was in the early 1980s, when my parents came here as refugees. They were picked up by a Dutch ship when their boat sank in the sea near Southeast Asia. First they ended up in a refugee camp in Singapore, then the Dutch government brought them to the Netherlands.
"My father fled, taught himself Dutch using Dutch-English and English-Vietnamese dictionaries"
I’m following in my parents’ footsteps. My father studied architectural engineering in Vietnam and his family was politically active. The communist regime arrested him and his entire family, sent them to a re-education camp and stopped him from continuing his studies. He fled, taught himself Dutch using Dutch-English and English-Vietnamese dictionaries – there was no Dutch-Vietnamese dictionary yet – and earned a Dutch secondary-school diploma within two years, after which he enrolled in computer science at the University of Twente at the age of 26. He found mathematical problems easier to solve than linguistic ones, so a STEM degree only made sense. My mother, who also fled the oppressive regime and met my father on the boat, followed a similar path. She enrolled in a chemistry course but dropped out after a year when my eldest sister was born. We’re a STEM family. I studied clinical technology at the University of Twente. I guess it must be in our genes.
At home, we talk each other’s ears off. Our family carries silent grief. Fleeing Vietnam, relatives on my mother’s side going missing during the perilous journey, leaving friends and family behind, settling in a foreign country… We don’t talk about it much. You are very open with your children, but Vietnamese families don’t talk about emotional stuff. My parents are proud of me for winning the Dissertation Prize, but they don’t say it directly to me. They show it with a hug or a text message. The prize came out of the blue for me, by the way; it didn’t even occur to me that I might be considered.
"As a cardiologist, you’re dealing with matters of life and death"
A wise lesson my father taught me. My father warned me that I would have to work twice as hard to achieve the same things as a Dutch child. And I did. I completed the highest level of secondary school, took additional subjects, completed two degrees – clinical technology and Medical Doctor-Clinical Researcher (AKO) in Maastricht – and earned a double doctorate in computational medicine. I’m a second-generation migrant with a refugee mentality. You feel like you have to make up for something; you don’t want to disappoint your parents, who worked so hard to give you opportunities. That’s why I found it very difficult to switch to the Medical Doctor-Clinical Researcher programme. Clinical technology is a demanding six-year degree programme. You work alongside doctors, but you don’t treat or operate on patients yourself. When I was halfway through the programme and doing hospital placements, including in Maastricht, I found myself jealous of the doctors performing procedures like implanting pacemakers. The way they interacted with patients, the way they searched for solutions… As a cardiologist, you’re dealing with matters of life and death. Being able to help when a patient’s life is in immediate danger – that’s what I live for. I was afraid to switch programmes, so I applied without telling anyone and only told my parents and boyfriend after I was accepted. I didn’t want to disappoint them. I ended up completing my degree in clinical technology, too.
I was named after… My full name is actually Vũ Uyên Châu Nguyễn. [Laughs] Vũ is my mother’s family name. Uyên Châu is my given name. My mother once told me that it means “precious pearl” or “jewel”. At home, they call me Châu [pronounced “ciao”], but when I was doing a placement in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland during medical school, my name caused confusion and they started calling me Uyen instead. Nguyễn is my father’s surname, kind of like the Vietnamese version of “Smith”. I’ve been to Vietnam twice. I don’t speak the language very well, and I feel different there; I can’t explain why. I’m mostly Dutch and I’m okay with that. I’m happy with who I am.
"I was one of the few Asian girls in my secondary school"
What’s the best decision you ever made? Coming to Maastricht for the Medical Doctor-Clinical Researcher programme. That’s where it all started. It’s where I met my mentor, Frits Prinzen, a physiologist and professor of Electro-Mechanics of the Heart, who saw my potential. It was incredible. When I asked him if I could do a placement with him in the summer between my first and second year – I wanted to keep going, to do something useful during the holidays – he put me in touch with his colleague Angelo Auricchio, a professor and electrophysiologist in Switzerland. In Switzerland, physicist Mark Potse taught me how to work with computer models and measurements of the electrical activity of the heart. His institute works closely with computer scientists and model developers, which suited me. I learnt so much there, and Angelo kept asking me to come back, sometimes between clinical rotations. He became my PhD supervisor, along with Kevin Vernooy, a UM professor and electrophysiologist. Electrophysiology is a subspecialty of cardiology I’ve only just started in. It’s all about heart rhythm disturbances and how to treat them with pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) or with ablation – burning away tiny areas of heart tissue. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.
What does your partner find annoying about you? He was born in Vietnam, came to the Netherlands as a child and is eight years older than me. His Vietnamese roots run deeper, perhaps, so his parenting style is stricter than mine, which is more Dutch. He says I’m too soft with the children. He’s an electrical engineer with a PhD in experimental physics. He has always worked very hard, but when he comes home from work nowadays, he’s done. I often work and study in the evenings, when the children are asleep, and on weekends. He accepts that; he knows that when a paper is due, it’s due. I appreciate that.
It was by chance that I ended up with a Vietnamese partner. No, not entirely. I used to think I had to. You just feel different, look different – I was one of the few Asian girls in my secondary school. So I thought, if your partner is different too – Vietnamese, that is – you’ll understand each other better. I’ve since come to see things differently; I feel very Dutch now, and I think it doesn’t matter what you studied or where your roots are. [Laughs] But maybe I’ll come to see it differently again in ten years’ time.