The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
A life on the frontlines
TV doctor and former British Army officer Dr Saleyha Ahsan tells Michael Alexander how her five years in Dundee prepared her for a career across the fields of medicine, media and humanitarianism
As an A&E doctor, freelance film maker and former British Army officer, Dr Saleyha Ahsan has had her share of frontline experiences around the world.
But if there’s one place where the 46-year-old feels most at home, it’s in Dundee.
Dr Ahsan graduated from the Dundee University School of Medicine in 2006, after serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Bosnia.
She was the first British Muslim woman to graduate from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as an army officer.
As well as her work as an A&E doctor, Dr Ahsan has forged a career in television, appearing on Trust Me, I’m A Doctor and The One Show.
But it’s the five years she spent in Dundee as an under graduate, and the city’s role in making her the doctor she is today, that she’ll focus on when she gives the last of the university’s prestigious Saturday evening lectures tomorrow.
“I’m going to talk about how Dundee kind of shaped my future and how important it was in helping me to carve out my career the way that I wanted to,” she said from her base in North Wales.
“I’ve got siblings who were medical students down in London and we used to compare notes and ways of doing things. I still think that what we did in Dundee really, really worked for me and helped me to be the doctor that I am today. Dundee medical school was innovative, it was open-minded, it was happy to consider left-field ideas.
“Being invited back to speak during this really important year at Dundee, as part of the Saturday lecture series, is massively important to me.”
Born and raised in Essex, the daughter of two teachers went to a “not particularly aspirational” inner city comprehensive school and studied chemistry at Salford University. There, she developed her love of the outdoors through the Army Cadets and, after a spell working as a radio journalist, decided, aged 25, to go full time with the army.
It was in 1997, while serving in Bosnia as a medical support officer as part of a Nato stabilisation force, that she decided her future lay in medicine.
She said: “While I was there I saw some horrific trauma that my soldiers dealt with – people who were stepping on landmines, getting their legs blown off, because their homes were booby trapped by the opposing side.
“I saw the amazing work of military medics looking after them and thought I wanted to do medicine.”
Applying to Scottish universities to be close to the mountains she had grown fond of during military training, she received unconditional offers from Glasgow and Dundee. What swung it for Dundee, where she matriculated in 2000, was an offer to defer for a year when she was offered the chance to take part in the Army Millennium expedition to climb 21,000-foot Pokalde in Nepal.
“My first-ever visit to Dundee was for my interview and I remember just feeling so welcome. It was a real campus university and had a really good vibe to it. Dundee, I loved as a city,” she said.
Dr Ahsan juggled working as a freelance journalist while studying in Dundee and, again, the university was “very supportive”.
In 2002 she made a documentary about doctors in Palestine, which was edited in association with film students at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and screened at DCA.
Graduating in 2006, she was “tempted away” to do her foundation training in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
She went on to work in A&E in London and is now a clinical fellow in emergency medicine in three hospitals, based in Bangor, North Wales.
Dr Saleyha Ashan is speaking in the Dundee University Dalhousie Building tomorrow from 6-7pm. Free tickets are available by visiting www.dundee.ac. uk/sels, emailing events@dundee.ac. uk, calling 01382 385108 or from the university’s Tower Building reception.
Dundee really, really worked for me and helped me to be the doctor that I am today