Scout’s first-aid instincts lead to doctor’s scrubs
● Keaton Harris was just 11 years old and reading Harry Potter when he found his calling in the emergency unit of New Somerset Hospital in Cape Town.
Admitted as a patient after an asthma attack, he noticed that a man in a nearby bed was having a seizure. Drawing on his firstaid training as a member of the Scouts, Harris disconnected his nebuliser, leapt up and rolled the unconscious patient onto his side — into the recovery position.
“After a few minutes, a doctor came into the room and changed the trajectory of my life,” Harris, now 28, said this week. “He sat next to me and said that I should become a doctor because not everyone could do what I did. I remember feeling so good because I had helped someone. I had never felt such a purpose before.”
Now, 17 years later, Harris is back at the same hospital — as a doctor himself. Last week he started work as a medical intern, after graduating cum laude at Stellenbosch University.
“It has been absolutely phenomenal. The hospital has been everything I could have hoped for and so much more. The constant environment of support has really motivated me to want to grow both personally and professionally,” he said.
“Being a doctor and jumping into the medical field has been beyond my wildest dreams. I get home and I am just so fulfilled, happy and ready to change the world. I think this is what people mean when they say you are stepping into God’s calling for your life.”
But getting to where he is today has been a struggle for Harris and his single-parent mother, Charlotte Sinclair, who sometimes struggled to put food on the table.
After leaving school Harris could not get into medical school, so he did a BPharm at the University of the Western Cape, graduating summa cum laude.
“When I got my rejection letters, I remember feeling so lost and not knowing what to do. There were times when for a split second I thought about giving up, but thankfully God would swiftly remove those thoughts. You could even say that going for my BPharm was in a way desperation at wanting to learn and not wanting to spend a year at home.”
With the BPharm in his pocket, Harris was able to get into medical school at Stellenbosch University.
He said his next project would be to write his autobiography, which he hopes will inspire others not to give up on their dreams.
“My aim for this is really to inspire others that a dream delayed is never a dream denied. Sometimes people just need a bit of encouragement ... Someone to remind them they are able.”
Harris hopes to specialise in orthopaedics or sports medicine.
“I definitely plan on staying in South Africa and not emigrating. I want to give back to the country that allowed me to become a doctor. If everyone leaves, then who is there to look after South Africa’s people?”
Sinclair, a beauty therapist, had to sell their furniture to pay her son’s registration fees at UWC.
“I remember when Keaton studied pharmacy, when I dropped him on his first day, he stood there and I cried my eyes out. I thought to myself how can I just leave him there? It was difficult being a single parent at the time,” she said.
“It’s scary making decisions for you and your child. As a parent I needed to be there for him, in as many different facets that he needed me to be.”
The only regret Harris has is that he did not stay in touch with the doctor who changed his life back in 2006.
“To be honest, I never really thought about the impact his words would have until many days after my admission as a patient. I hope that maybe one day he will see [my story] and think of the boy who had an asthma attack and was in the corner of the emergency centre on a nebuliser reading