Biography - Thomas J. Donohue, MD

Thomas Donohue, MD, is a cardiologist who specializes in treating patients with heart failure. 

In college, Dr. Donohue set out to study political science, but soon realized he didn’t like that there was no single “right answer” to a given question. 

“So, I became a chemistry major instead, where it was clear when you had a right answer,” Dr. Donohue says. “Medicine became appealing to me because my father had heart issues and died right after I graduated from college. I was drawn to cardiology because it was, at that time, becoming a much more dynamic field.” 

He was trained in interventional cardiology and ran a catheterization laboratory, where he focused on coronary blood flow and which patients should—and should not—receive angioplasty. 

While he enjoyed the work, he says he eventually needed a change.

“When you are full-time in an academic catheter lab, you are performing procedures on people, but you don’t build long-term relationships with them,” he says. “I love talking to patients. They have fascinating stories. I then became interested in heart failure, and began working with heart transplant patients.” 

After serving in several leadership roles at Yale New Haven Hospital , Dr. Donohue is now director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Hospitalists Program. A hospitalist is a physician who only sees patients inside the hospital. 

“As much as I still love my interactions with patients, I also love the role I play in developing younger physicians,” he says. “These are the people who will take care of us when we are old. We have a strong, large hospitalist program at Yale New Haven Hospital.” 

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