Posted on: 12 June 2024
Dr Nadia Ahmed, CNWL’s Consultant HIV and Sexual Health Physician features in a new recruitment initiative encouraging doctors to consider a career working in sexual health.
The British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) launched LoveGUM, a website with blog posts and videos for doctors to feel inspired to specialise in genitourinary medicine (GUM).
Nadia’s says:
“I feel very fortunate to work in a speciality that over ten years from starting, I (still) find intellectually stimulating, challenging (in a good way!) and above all enjoy. I really cannot see my enthusiasm and passion for HIV, sexual and reproductive health ever tiring when the speciality offers so much variety and there is still so much to achieve both in the UK and internationally.
When people ask why I chose the speciality, similar to my answer about why I chose medicine as a career, I can give specific reasons, but I think the strongest reason for me is not knowing but just knowing it is what I wanted to do. I think I was drawn to the speciality because of part of my South African and Indian heritage, and seeing and knowing about the impact HIV particularly had and still has, but also the health inequalities from a local to societal level.
Sexual health gives you a unique opportunity to manage symptoms people are often quite nervous about seeing a doctor for, reassuring them, testing and even seeing the causative agent moving around under a microscope, and treating them.”
You can read Dr Nadia’s full blog post on the LoveGUM website.
