Author & Emergency Medicine Physician, Cathy Wield, is a senior role model for the DSN, as well as being very active with the British Medical Association and sitting on the Staff, Associate Specialist and Specialty Doctors committee.
Cathy and her husband had their first baby at the beginning of her final year, and she postponed house jobs to complete their family. They spent 2 years as volunteers with a relief agency in Thailand. Cathy found that she loved A&E, and planned to start as a flex trainee, but her book, ‘Life After Darkness: a doctor’s journey through severe depression’, describes how she became ill just before starting her training. 8 years later, she returned to Emergency Medicine (EM) and completed her training, qualifying as a Specialist Registrar.
Her husband’s redundancy led to a relocation near Aberdeen, and Cathy took a job in Psychiatry, but found it was not a good fit for her. She then took an opportunity to move to Colorado, but found that the MBBS had to be within a 5 year window to be eligible to apply for residency programs in most of the USA, and worked outside of Medicine until the family returned to the UK in 2019. She is now back in Emergency Medicine as a SAS doctor, and continues to write and speak on mental health and wellbeing for doctors.