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Helen Higham
Hi Helen, Congratulations on the Frederic Hewitt Lectureship, how do you feel about the award?
Delighted is the easy answer! But more seriously - this is the 75th anniversary of the inaugural Frederic Hewitt Lecture. I'm the first woman to receive it, and one of my mentors, Pierre Foëx (Emeritus Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetics), won it exactly 30 years ago. Considering his influence on my career there's a really nice synchronicity there that felt pretty special on a personal level.
There can be times in anyone's career when you think, ‘oh, I haven’t made any progress, how have I got here?’ An award like the Lectureship forces you to take a moment, and look back, and you suddenly see the huge advances that we've made in OxSTaR (Oxford Simulation, Teaching and Research team) both in teaching and research. It feels extremely positive to exist in this space right now, because suddenly there's significant traction for the kind of things that we do in both simulation-based education and healthcare systems safety.
Why do you think you’re the first woman since 1950 to receive Frederick Hewitt Lectureship?
I think that where the Frederic Hewitt Lectureship is concerned, it's about having an opportunity to show a sustained and innovative contribution in a certain field, and I think that as ever, where women in medicine are concerned, that ability to balance work and life remains a challenge, so sustaining a contribution can be difficult.
I feel very proud of the fact that I'm the first woman to have achieved it, but also perhaps a little surprised, because as a specialty we are at least half women now. Our focus on flexible working has been exemplary: we offer less than full time opportunities in anaesthesia and we think very carefully about how we structure our postgraduate training programme to support flexibility in clinical training. As a consultant in anaesthesia, there are also opportunities to consider less than full time working. I chose that route to make sure that I had the necessary time both to be with my family but also to be able to develop and drive OxSTaR in in the way that I have.
Read the full interview on the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences website.