I am an Acute Care, Trauma and General Surgery Fellow in Vancouver General Hospital (VGH), having completed my surgical training in the UK.

My Fellowship was back in 2013. I travelled to North America to assess the use of telemedicine, visiting Hamilton and Tucson. After returning to the UK, putting the lessons I learnt to use proved difficult, owing to the time it takes to set up any sort of clinical service in the NHS. However, a small silver lining to the pandemic meant that I eventually assisted and advised in setting up telemedicine services in my final training rotation. I focused on restarting the local surgical education programme remotely.

One of my reasons for taking up the post at VGH was to understand how the Canadians use telemedicine. Because of the size and low population density of most of the country, telemedicine is a vital part of health care here.

My ambition is to continue travelling the world and learning about global health before returning to the UK. I am grateful to the Fellowship for giving me my first taste of learning on an international scale.