My name is Michael McCulloch. I'm a Pediatric Cardiologist here at the University of Virginia, Pediatric Heart Center and I am the Medical Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension and Mechanical Circulatory Support teams; and I work within the Heart Failure and Heart Transplant teams as well.

I think the world of pediatric cardiology, it's fascinating. It's constantly growing and the amount of things that we can do for kids now that we couldn't do even just 10 or 15 years ago, it's unbelievable.

The initial visits for sure are pretty involved. We need to kind of understand everything that's happened, so we need to understand from birth to present. All the issues that you might have had in between, any hospitalization, surgeries.

UVA is ... the way that this place has been put together and organized is, in my opinion, perfect. You've got a team that consistently works together day in, day out. So, there's no information that my surgeon, my partners, my sonographers, my nurses, there's no piece of information that one person knows that another one doesn't because we feel that there's no other way to take care of somebody without having everyone be involved in the decision processes.

I think that probably the favorite part of my job is when you see a kid who's been really, really sick and has been not doing well and not able to interact with their parents, or smile, or do any of the kind of things that they would typically like to be doing. Seeing that child then smile, laugh, get out of bed, walk, let parents hold them, that's far and away the best thing that you can see.

Some days are very long and very difficult but when you finally get those kids smiling and getting back to their parents, that's the best thing that you can hope for.