Inspirational Story

What subjects did you study at school?

I completed A-levels in Biology, Chemistry, English Literature and AS Geography.

A-levels were a really big step up from GCSEs so I spent a lot of time studying, preparing, revising to succeed in my exams.

I went to a good college in Leeds, and from there applied for BSc Physiotherapy, going on to Leeds Met (now Leeds Beckett).

What influenced your choice of profession?

I wanted a career that would be transferable if I wanted to travel in the future, and healthcare offered that.

I liked the idea of rehabilitation, and after managing to secure some work experience in a hospital, I was really intrigued to see what role physios play in helping people move better again.

What were your thoughts before and after starting the course?

Before starting physio I was really nervous. However, I loved the course content and really enjoyed learning about anatomy, physiology and what can go wrong in terms of disease, infection, illness.

What do you love about your role?

As a Physio I really enjoyed the patient interaction.

As my role is now in corporate senior leadership, I don’t really have much interaction with patients, which I do miss! However I enjoy leading projects, engaging with stakeholders to improve how services deliver care.

What does your role look like day to day?

As a Physio my day would start with reviewing new referrals, attending handover on the ward, planning my day to decide which patients needed reviewing first, and then start seeing patients who required input.

In this time, it would be delivering assessments, treatments, working with other colleagues to deliver patient care, and then completing any onwards referrals, calls to family members, arranging equipment or onward transfer as required.

In my digital lead role, no day is ever the same.

It might be attending one of the community sites to see/hear firsthand what issues are impacting staff, writing business cases to build a case for investment, approving or reviewing requests for equipment or business cases others have written, advising on digital matters for the division.

Its quite varied and involves interacting with many different people from both within my division but also across the Trust and across the region. I often do a lot of reading and reviewing papers, and emails too.

How you come to be in the position you are in now?

Although I enjoyed my time as a Physio, I wanted to try something different.

I applied for a secondment in IT, and was offered a role as Clinical change manager. This role gave me significant exposure to a wide variety of clinical services and the IT challenges they are facing.

I would then implement and lead Clinical IT systems to support their development as services. After doing that for a couple of years, I was then offered a role as Digital lead for ACS which seemed like natural progression, so that’s where I have ended up being where I am now 😊

If there is anything specific you would like to share about having South Asian heritage?

South Asian heritage is rich, fascinating and it always humbles me to hear the many stories of people from our heritage who came before us, what they experienced, and what they went on to achieve.

The partition plays a big part in this (in 1947, India was divided up by the British colonisers, resulting in the largest mass movement of people to ever occur in human history) which I think defines and shapes our community here in the UK too.

I always remember my Grandad telling me the story of how he was 9 years old when the partition occurred. He walked for days on foot to move to Kashmir, from which a new beginning was made.