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12 FYi • Profile


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VER since she was a young girl, Hannah McLean dreamed of working in Africa. Her grandparents were medical missionaries in Nigeria for over 20 years and her mother was brought up there. She grew up hearing stories of their experiences and something about them lit a desire inside her that


was overwhelming. “It was one of my main motivations for going into


medicine,” says the 27-year-old F2 doctor. “I felt I really wanted to have a tool that I could share.” That early dream has long since come to fruition – and as


a direct consequence saw her nominated last year in two categories of the BMJ Group Improving Health Awards, the Junior Doctor of the Year and the Karen Woo Award, mainly for her work bringing much-needed healthcare to prisoners in Ugandan jails. The latter, named after a relief charity doctor killed in Afghanistan in 2010, recognises an individual who has gone well beyond the call of duty to deliver care for patients in difficult environments. But Hannah’s road to medical recognition has been


anything but typical: a mere 18 months after starting her medical degree at Nottingham, she put her studies on hold indefinitely. Ironically, though it was Africa that had got her into medicine, she had begun to feel that medicine was keeping her away from Africa. She still hadn’t ever set foot on the continent. “I started questioning why I wanted to do medicine. I


went straight from doing my A levels to medical school. It was very academic. I like the more practical things and I felt like I was re-sitting my A levels and I really started doubting if it was for me,” she says.


In the deep end Through a friend of a friend, she managed to arrange a two-month stint as a volunteer at the Children of the Nile hospice in Soroti, in north-east Uganda, a local charity funded by an American agency. The charity looks after widows in an area that has seen a lot of rebel activity. Seventy per cent of the women were HIV-positive. Though it was quickly clear to her the hospice was struggling in terms of its leadership, she “shut up for eight weeks and got on with serving them”. At the end of that period, however, she outlined her


vision for what the hospice could be, and her ideas for how to achieve that, including outreach into the community. An American director who was visiting offered her the job of running the hospice then and there. She was 22.


Above and right: The grim surroundings of a prison sick bay and one that has been renovated by the African Prisons Project. Below and opposite: Dr Hannah McLean helps women who are being cared for at the Children of the Nile hospice in north-east Uganda.


FINDING


PURPOS


Adam Campbell talks to FY2 doctor Hannah McLean on how her medical career developed focus in the overcrowded prisons of Uganda


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