My cultural awakening: Leonardo da Vinci made me rethink surgery – I’ve since repaired over 3,000 hearts | Leonardo da Vinci

IIf I had asked my teenage self, growing up in a small village in Shropshire, what I wanted to do with my life, I would have been talking about art and music long before I was talking about scalpel blades and operating theatres. When I was 18, I was going to go to art school, until my mother sat me down and told me flatly that being an artist wouldn’t make me a lot of money. As she spoke, a documentary about the surgery came on the black-and-white television screen in our living room. I told her, half-jokingly, that’s what I’d do instead. So I ended up retaking my A-level exams and making my way into medical school, where I qualified in 1975.

By 1986, I was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, where I was repairing failing hearts in the emerging field of medicine. Since then I have repaired more than 3,000 mitral valves – more than any surgeon in the UK – but the work that truly reshaped me came not from a textbook but from an encounter with centuries-old drawings.

It was 1977, and I was working at Charing Cross Hospital in London doing clinical training. One morning, I was walking past the Royal Academy and saw that it was hosting an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings, the first proper display of Leonardo da Vinci’s works in the country.

I walked in and was amazed: the works exuded an unexpected warmth and humanity. I had studied Leonardo at A-level, but seeing the drawings in person was something else. Leonardo was deeply interested in scientific questions, dissected about 30 human cadavers and many other animals, and recorded his findings in hundreds of detailed drawings and notes. I was fascinated not only by the stunning beauty of the line, but also by his insistence in his notes that everything in nature has purpose and form.

I began to make connections between his work and mine – at the time, mitral valve surgery was largely about forcing solutions on the valve, rather than trying to recreate the body’s normal physiology. I started thinking about how the valve actually works in nature, and began to wonder if I could modify my surgery accordingly, to make it a more physiological approach.

Mitral valve repair has been successful in its previous form, but it may affect normal movement – especially for younger, more active patients. It made me wonder how didactic heart surgery has become: When the risks are so high, surgeons tend to follow prescribed techniques because they are safe, defensible, and unlikely to attract censure. Leonardo didn’t tell me how to work, but he changed my way of thinking, encouraging me to work with the natural design of the heart rather than reshaping it into something almost artificial.

I have always believed that art and science can feed each other. At Papworth, I invite several resident artists to work with me, and I encourage students to think in a broad, almost artistic way. I believe that both fields will make further progress by learning from each other. In 2013, she wrote a book about her findings, called The Heart of Leonardo. Contains all of Leonardo’s drawings of the heart and its functions, interpreted in the light of modern knowledge, and comparing his illustrations with contemporary images.

I still draw and draw in my spare time, and this month one of my drawings was hung in an exhibition at Saatchi Gallery, raising money for children’s heart surgery with the Chain of Hope charity. She has worked with the charity for more than a decade, providing life-saving operations for children in Ethiopia, where heart disease remains devastatingly common. It may seem strange to say that a Renaissance artist reshaped my surgical practice, but that is exactly what happened. It was my training that taught me the basics of medicine, but it was Leonardo who taught me that to heal the heart, you must first understand its life as it moves, and look at it with an artistic and open eye.

Has a cultural moment prompted you to make a major change in your life? Email us at culture.awakening@theguardian.com