When I ask medical students and younger doctors why they want to do general practice these days, the answers are usually practical ones. They want a portfolio career, flexibility, the opportunity to move abroad, time for a family or the chance to pursue other interests alongside medicine.
They’re all perfectly reasonable answers, but I rarely hear someone say, “Because I love it.” Or, “Because it’s in my blood.”
For me, it really was that I wanted to be a doctor from as early as I can remember. Not because anyone pushed me into it, and not because it was expected of me. It simply felt like the most natural thing in the world.
My parents came to the UK in 1971. Dad had previously come to Newcastle as a teenager to study medicine before returning home, and like so many people of their generation, they came here to build a life through hard work and opportunity.
In those days, single-handed GP practices were the norm. Dad started with no patients at all and, by the time he retired in 1996, had built a practice of well over 3,000 patients. He worked tirelessly. General practice was very different then. GPs were on call around the clock, carried bleeps, did home visits, visited patients in hospital and often cared for generations of the same families.
We lived just up the road from the surgery, so work and home often blended into one. When Mum started working there too, as receptionist, practice manager and everything in between, the surgery became a huge part of our family life.
School holidays were often spent there. My brother and I would sit in the back, watch television, wander around and simply be part of the life of the surgery. At lunchtime we would often all eat together before the afternoon began. Mum would usually head home, while Dad got on with the rest of his day. That might mean visits, paperwork, casualty shifts or any number of other responsibilities. We often wouldn’t see him again until much later that evening.
The surgery never felt separate from family life. It was simply part of it.
Money was tight in those early years. We all slept in one room for a long time because every penny went towards creating a better future for the family. Yet I never felt deprived. Quite the opposite.
Home felt safe, secure, happy and simple.
Mum was an incredible cook and somehow managed to make wonderful meals out of very little. She was loyal, resilient, creative and endlessly supportive. Dad shared many of the same qualities. He was kind, thoughtful and wise. He hardly ever got angry. He listened intently, spoke carefully and always seemed to know exactly what needed to be said.
One of my earliest memories is being allowed to stay up one evening waiting for him to come home. When he finally walked through the door, I ran towards him and he scooped me up so high that I felt I could touch the ceiling. He was as happy to see me as I was to see him. It is a memory that has stayed with me all my life.
As I got older, Dad made every effort to be there for school plays and important moments. If work occasionally got in the way, I never felt angry or upset. I simply understood that he was needed elsewhere and that he would have been there if he could.
I was always incredibly proud of my parents. Wherever we went, people seemed to know them. They would stop to chat in the street, wave from across the road or come over to say hello.
As a child, I loved it. In fact, there were times when I genuinely thought Mum and Dad were famous. The amount of attention they received certainly made it feel that way.
I loved tagging along with Dad. We would pop into the local newsagent and somehow leave with free sweets because he was the owner’s GP. Easter often seemed to bring a mountain of Easter eggs from grateful patients. At the time, I simply thought it was wonderful.
As I grew older and understood what being proud of someone really meant, I realised just how proud I was of both of them and how lucky I was to be their daughter. Looking back, those small gestures weren’t really about the sweets or the Easter eggs. They reflected the affection, trust and respect people had for my parents.
More than anything, I loved seeing the way people warmed to them. They were kind, approachable and genuinely interested in others. Even as a child, I could see the trust people placed in them, and I think that left a lasting impression on me.
Both of my parents were incredibly generous. They helped family, friends and complete strangers. Sometimes that meant advice, sometimes practical help and sometimes opening doors for others. They were a team in every sense of the word.
I followed Dad everywhere he would let me. I accompanied him on visits, watched how he interacted with people and absorbed everything around me. At sixteen, I was allowed to sit in during consultations. I loved it.
What struck me most wasn’t the medicine itself. It was the relationships.
Patients knew him and he knew them. He knew their families, their histories and often their worries before they had even spoken. People trusted him. They respected him. He was clinically excellent, direct when he needed to be and never particularly tolerant of excuses or self-pity.
Having experienced hardship himself and spent his life working tirelessly to build a future for his family, he believed people were often capable of more than they realised. It wasn’t a lack of compassion. Quite the opposite. He simply believed in personal responsibility and making the most of the opportunities you were given.
Yet people knew he cared.
For our family, he was the person everyone turned to. Even into my fifties, I would speak to him about major decisions. He remained my sounding board, my adviser and my guide long after I had become a doctor myself.
Mum was every bit as special. She was loyal, resilient, creative and completely devoted to her family. In many ways she was very similar to Dad. The difference was that she had a more sheltered upbringing and perhaps hadn’t seen as much of life as he had. Maybe that was why I found it easier to open up to Dad about certain things, but there was never any doubt that Mum was there for us.
She created a home that felt warm, welcoming and full of love and, as I got older, became one of my closest friends.
Both of them are missed every day.
Looking back now, part of me undoubtedly wanted to be like Dad. Single-handed general practice felt normal because it was all I had ever known. In many ways, I went on to build exactly the kind of practice I had grown up watching.
But the truth is that becoming a doctor was about more than following in Dad’s footsteps.
Medicine wasn’t really a career choice for me. It was simply part of life. It was in the conversations around the dinner table, in the surgery, in the patients who stopped Dad in the street and in the example my parents set every day.
I had seen what being a good doctor looked like.
More importantly, I had seen what it meant to serve a community, to work hard for something bigger than yourself and to earn people’s trust over a lifetime.
So when people ask me why I became a doctor, the answer is simple.
Part of me wanted to be like Dad.
But more than that, it was already part of who I was. It was in my blood, in my upbringing and in my being. I had seen first-hand the privilege of helping people and the difference one person could make to so many lives.
That is where it all started for me.
Notes from a GP 