For South Asian Heritage Month, this This Doctor Can blog post focuses on the life and career of Professor Geeta Menon FRCP.
I was born and brought up in Gujarat in India, and from an early age I was encouraged to choose and work towards a professional career of some sort. Even though there were no clinicians in my family, I always wanted to become a doctor, so for me medicine was a ‘no-brainer’.
I was fortunate enough to attend a good all-girls convent school which offered an English education and helped me on my path towards medical school in Ahmedabad where I then went on to specialise in ophthalmology.
Despite speaking English, arriving in England for the first time was a huge culture shock for me.
During my training, my family organised an arranged marriage for me which saw me eventually move to Kerala where my husband, a fellow clinician, lived and worked. The facilities for ophthalmology in Kerala were nowhere near as good as in Ahmedabad and they desperately needed a retinal surgeon. After 6 months of working there, I returned to Ahmedabad to do my retinal surgery training.
In those days, women going into retinal surgery were few and far between. I still remember one of the professors saying to me ‘I think you’d be better off doing ocular pathology’. Fortunately, I didn’t listen to him and went on to work as a retinal surgeon in Kerala for the next 8 years!
In the meantime, my younger brother had come to the UK and kept telling me to join him and get my fellowship here. At the time, I worked with a professor in Kerala who had been to the UK a few years ago with the help of the Commonwealth Fellowship, and it was her who eventually sponsored me to come to the UK. It was in 1995 that I first stepped foot on UK soil.
Despite speaking English, arriving in England for the first time was a huge culture shock for me. I’d left my husband and son in India as they weren’t able to join me for another month due to my husband’s work commitments, so I found myself having to navigate a totally different way of living, without much support. I’d read about the UK in story books – the climate, the temperature, the snow etc – but I’d never experienced it. Everything was new to me, from starting a bank account to finding a house for us to live in – I was doing it all for the first time. It was also the first time I’d ever left my son, which was incredibly hard.
The role I was offered in the UK was a senior house officer (SHO) job in Luton. I went from being a consultant retinal surgeon in India to starting training all over again in the UK. It was quite a change! However, 6 months down the line, the hospital saw that I was over-qualified for the role and offered me a role as a registrar.
I eventually came out of training to take a middle-grade role at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey, which even though I was over-qualified for, offered me the flexibility and stability I needed to spend more time with my family. I was happy there but the consultant I was working with called me in one day and said ‘Geeta, you’re not working to your potential here. You could be a consultant!’
Despite my protests, they eventually persuaded me to apply for the equivalence training scheme where the training I’d done in India would be compared to the equivalent level of training here in the UK. I put my application in and fortunately I got onto the specialist register.
Once I became a consultant, I developed the regional macular service of international repute. I took on roles of education and research, becoming the director of medical education before heading up the school for ophthalmology in the Kent, Surrey and Sussex deanery. When I first became head of school, there was quite a bit of backlash about the fact that I hadn’t trained in this country so how could I possibly know anything about training? However, some of the training I developed for the school actually went on to be adopted nationally.
it’s important for women like me to have their voices heard
In 2016 I was incredibly fortunate to elected as a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), and subsequently won the RCP–National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) award for Excellent Research Leadership in the NHS that year. In 2017 I received the RCP Excellence in Patient Care Award for my international work.
Even though I’ve lived in this country for so many years, I still genuinely find it hard to talk about myself. Inherent in me is the culture in India of humility and not ‘blowing your own trumpet’. Even now when I phone my mum in India to tell her about my achievements, she says ‘remember to be humble’.
However, I think it’s important for women like me to have their voices heard. All my life people have made assumptions about me and my abilities, my status and qualifications as an Indian woman. I remember once taking a flight to India and being upgraded to first class. I was dressed in traditional Indian clothes and the white man standing in the queue behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Lady, I think you’re in the wrong queue’. I smiled politely at him and turned away but, assuming I spoke no English, he took out his boarding card and said in a patronising tone ‘this is the first-class queue’. I showed him my own boarding card and watched as his face turned red.
After everything I’ve been through and all the professional achievements I’ve gained, my main advice is exactly what I learnt and instilled from my family and friends in India – be kind, be humble, and don’t forget to truly value the people around you. It’s so important. This is what has made me the person I am today, and it’s the exact sentiment I hope I’ve passed on to my son who is now a radiologist.
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