"I encourage everyone to bring who they are to work"

A pathway to medicine

"As a young boy growing up in Trinidad, I had a lot of time on my hands. I would draw and flick through encyclopaedias with curiosity looking at pictures and entries describing things I didn’t understand. Luckily, I haven’t lost this child-like curiosity and creativity, both of which are crucial to my job.

I came to the UK with my family in 1984 at the age of 17 and began my A-levels here. I like change, so I was really looking forward to the move. Once in the UK, I remember a teacher asking me what I wanted to study at university during my A-levels. I never really had a plan to study medicine. Growing up, no one in my family was a doctor. My answer to the teacher ‘how about medicine?’ probably reflected a failure of imagination at the time.

In any case, three decades later I’m an expert in brain conditions that affect balance and spatial orientation. Our current research includes studies in traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Culture shock

There are some interesting comparisons between life in Trinidad and the UK (and let’s not mention the weather!) When I first came to the UK, I found it difficult to understand the class system; for example, why children from more privileged backgrounds would be more likely to study and perform better in school seemed nonsensical to me.

I feel strongly about equality of opportunity for education. In Trinidad, the best schools are non-fee paying, and access is not determined by where you live or who your parents are.

An equal playing field

Although I went to a non-fee paying government-supported Catholic secondary school, I had classmates of all religions.

Many of my classmates came from extremely humble backgrounds with limited electricity and water; crucially, this was no impediment to their success. Key to their success was a deep understanding that we were all equals in school. I think this informs how I work with people.

I treat neurology trainees as my equal. Similarly, I have a horizontal hierarchy in my research group. Although I provide the direction, I trust team members to get the task done and making mistakes tells me that the team are taking things to the edge – which is what I want from them.