Rosie continued: “I was a bit nervous. If you’re trying to work with a senior, you’re obviously trying to impress them, so you’ll read around the topic, bump up on your knowledge and try and do everything right.
“Invariably, you don’t all the time, so I was a bit worried that I would make a faux pas.
“But he was really nice, and it was very much like he was leading everything.
“It was nice the way he introduced me to his patients as well, because I was a bit anxious about how the patients might feel.”
Roger led with how qualified Rosie is, before letting patients know that she also happened to be his daughter – something they really liked.
Rosie had not actually wanted to go into orthopaedics when starting out in medicine, and was put off by attitudes towards women as surgeons.
She said: “I always kind of thought I wouldn’t go into surgery, because that’s what my dad does.
“But I loved it. It’s a really practical job. Like joinery and sort of carpentry with bones – getting something that’s broken and fixing it back together.
“It also has really good outcomes. You’re taking someone who’s in pain and you’re trying to make them pain free, which is so rewarding.”
But getting over the barrier of being a woman in surgery was still a hurdle for Rosie.
Currently in the UK 55 per cent of medical students are female, but women only end up making 12 per cent of consultant surgeons.
And the ratio of male to female surgeons is still a depressing 8:1.
This is particularly seen in orthopaedics, where surgeons have a stereotype of being big, tall, strapping men.
Rosie said: “I was brought up in an environment where gender wasn’t really a thing that we discussed.
“I’ve got two sisters so my dad was surrounded by women and there was never really a question that we wouldn’t go into something because we couldn’t because we were girls.
“But that is a thing that I certainly have been told during my career.
“There is a belief that you have to be strong to do the job. But nowadays, it’s more about technique, rather than just how hard you hit something or how strong you are doing something.”
Roger Hackney is “pleasantly surprised” that Rosie is following in his footsteps.
He said: “Rosie, although she’s very modest about it, is a bit of a high flyer. She is someone who has got a lot of driving energy.”
Rosie won the prize for surgery for her year when she was at University in Nottingham.
Like her dad, she was also a keen athlete. She run the 100m for Yorkshire and was even invited to trial for the Scottish touch rugby team.
She has since won the “plum” Edinburgh rotation, after spending the latter years of her University training there and also taken time out to work medically in Nepal and Ethiopia.
During the operation, he said: “You can tell that she’s very switched on and interested.
“It made me very proud. Quite a few doctors have their children follow them into medicine, but there are few that go into surgery, even fewer females go into surgery, and not many go into orthopaedics”
There is an old joke among doctors that to be in orthopaedics you have to be as strong as an Ox and have at least half the intelligence.
He said: “It’s people like Rosie that will take it on.
“She was one of three sisters. I always told them they’re just as good as all the boys and you need to do as hard as you can, not be put off and achieve.
“It is this sort of thing that shows women that they can go into orthopaedics.”
Leeds-based orthopaedic consultant Paul Cowling said: “Knowing Roger, I’m sure he’d have been amazingly proud of the chance to operate with you. What a moment!”
And surgeon Andrew Renwick agreed, saying: “I suspect that has been his proudest day in theatre.
“Only thing a surgeon leaves behind that is meaningful is his children and trainees!”
Ms Tamzin Cuming, a consultant colorectal surgeon and chair of the Women in Surgery Forum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said: “I am delighted to read this heartwarming story about a father-daughter team working together in the operating theatre.
“It’s fantastic to see here in microcosm the support that older male surgeons can give to the next generation of women surgeons, especially as orthopaedics is one of the specialties with the lowest number of women.
“It shows the changing face of surgery.”
Through the camera, which is inserted through tiny incisions, doctors can see the inside of your elbow, which allows them to direct their surgical instruments to fix the problem in a non-invasive way.
