Roots, Resilience and Responsibility: A Journey From Africa to Specialist Occupational Health Practice in the UK

My journey begins not in a lecture theatre or a clinical placement, but in the presence of my grandmother. She had worked in nursing, and as I grew up, she poured into me a deep sense of care, compassion, and attentiveness to the emotional needs of others. Those values became the foundation of everything that followed. When the opportunity arose to train as a nurse in the United Kingdom, I embraced it without hesitation. I have never looked back.

I qualified as a Registered Nurse and entered intensive care, an environment I found demanding, purposeful, and deeply rewarding. Yet as I matured clinically and personally, I began to sense something was missing. Then, quite by chance, I came across an article about occupational health. The more I read, the more alive I felt. A visit to the Nissan Washington site, though visa restrictions prevented me from applying for the role at the time, gave me something far more valuable than a job offer. It gave me a vision. The manager there took time to show me a world of nursing I had not known existed. She could easily have turned me away. Instead, she opened a door that changed the entire direction of my life.

Consider this: the average person in the United Kingdom will spend approximately 84,000 hours working over the course of their lifetime. More time at work than with their children, their friends, or their own health. According to the Health and Safety Executive, 1.8 million workers in Great Britain suffer from a work-related illness each year, with 35.2 million working days lost annually as a result. The World Health Organisation estimates that work-related conditions account for 5.9 percent of all deaths globally. These are not abstract numbers. Behind every statistic is a person, a family, a livelihood. That is what occupational health practitioners hold in their hands every single day.

Over twenty years, I have had the privilege of working across some of the most diverse industries imaginable, healthcare, engineering, manufacturing, higher education, power generation, and local authority services, to name only a few. Each sector has taught me something distinct and irreplaceable. Healthcare sharpened my clinical thinking and reminded me that even those who care for others need someone to care for them. Engineering and manufacturing introduced me to the physical demands of labour and the culture of workers who keep industries moving, often at great personal cost to their bodies. Higher education brought nuance, the invisible pressures of academic life and the particular vulnerabilities of a workforce that rarely asks for help. Power stations taught me about high-hazard environments, where risk is constant, and the margin for error is thin. Local authority work showed me the breadth of public service and the toll it quietly takes on those who deliver it.

Every industry widened my knowledge not only within occupational health but far beyond it. I have sat in boardrooms and on factory floors. I have written reports that shaped organisational policy and held conversations in quiet rooms with workers who simply needed someone to listen. That breadth is one of the great gifts this profession offers, and it is one that is rarely spoken about loudly enough.

But the lessons that have marked me most deeply have not come from industries or institutions. They have come from people. Over two decades, I have met clients who have shown me the true definition of resilience, perseverance, and courage. Workers who have faced serious illness and returned to employment with a determination that humbled me. Migrant workers navigating health systems and workplace cultures far from anything familiar, carrying their vulnerability quietly and their dignity loudly. People who had every reason to give up and chose, day after day, not to. They have taught me more about the human spirit than any textbook ever could.

There is an African proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child. That is equally true in occupational health. I have been shaped by dedicated mentors who held my hand, shared their knowledge freely, and believed in me before I fully believed in myself. To anyone standing at the beginning of this journey, feeling uncertain or overlooked, I say this: seek your village. It is there.

As I mark twenty years in this field, as a leader and Occupational Health business owner, my conviction has never been stronger. We need more practitioners. We need more diverse voices. We need to tell this story in universities, in clinical networks, and in every space where the next generation of healthcare professionals is forming their vision of what their career could be.

The 84,000 hours that people spend at work deserve to be healthy hours. That is not a nice aspiration. It is an obligation. And this profession exists to honour it.

Disclaimer:

This blog will also be published by the Society of Occupational Medicine.