Dr. Archana Pradhan has been working as a Lead Consultant in Regional Anaesthetist in the Northern Lincolnshire has been awarded International Iconic Women Award 2023.
In joint family, she understood the importance of a strong support system, the sharing of responsibilities, cultural preservation, and social interactions amongst family members of different ages.
Caring for her Elderly Parents.
She nurtures the family values and believe that we should not forget our roots. While pursuing her career abroad she was in constant touch with her parents and whenever possible, she visits them back home and enjoy being with them and supporting them in whichever way she can. Her father faced critical illnesses a few times and she was by his side for all those instances, supporting him and her mother until he fully recovered. Her father is aged 93, while her mother is 83. They are mobile at home and independent, but mostly house bound. Whenever she visit them, roughly every two or three months, she tries to mobilise them by taking them outside. She encourage them to do some exercises at home like yoga, and to keep their mind alert, she have taught them to do crosswords and jigsaw puzzles which they thoroughly enjoy.
Education in Earlier Years.She is grateful to all her teachers who have helped her in her life. She was put in a vernacular school, Balmohan Vidya Mandir, which imbibed cultural values in her alongside receiving an excellent education. She studied hard while pursuing extracurricular activities like participating in debates and writing articles in school magazines. She also became an editor of the school magazine. She was felicitated with scholarship awards through competitive examinations in both junior and senior schools.
Medical Education in India
She passed her second board exam with flying colours and acquired admission to the highly prestigious G. S. Medical College and KEM Hospital, . She represented her junior college in the intercollegiate basketball team and in intercollegiate debate competitions, and Finally she achieved her MBBS degree in 1989. She specialised in Anaesthetics and qualified with a Master's degree (M.D.) in 1993 from Mumbai University.
She worked as a junior Consultant Anaesthetist in Mumbai’s Nowrosjee Wadia Maternity Hospital for 4 years. Labour pain relief through epidural was a new and upcoming technique in India at the time, and she pioneered this technique during her tenure at Nowrosjee Wadia Maternity Hospital. She authored a scientific paper and did a presentation regarding case studies relating to labour analgesia, for which she was awarded a Gold Medal in the National Meeting in 1996.
Medical Education abroad
Later she decided to move to United Kingdom in 1997 for further training and experience. Through a rigorous and extremely competitive process, including an interview and delivering a presentation, she succeeded with a place of a Specialist Registrar. At that time, this was her biggest achievement. She went through a tough training period for five years and acquired an FRCA degree, after passing the examinations in her first attempt, while completing her training in Oxford.
It was tough and tiring as her son was young as she had to juggle between her career and family life to keep the work-life balance right with night shifts but she got through it with her positive attitude, perseverance, and passion for her work. Many of her friends had sent their children back home to their parents so they could focus on their trainings so her parents asked her to send her son back to India but Archana a fierce believer in family values, wanted her son to grow with her at the same time she did not want to burden her parents with her own childcare responsibilities. Therefore, she continued to look after her son while pursuing her trainings and exams in the UK. that gave her immense sense of happiness and fulfilment. During her training days in Oxford, She was awarded the Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training in 2004.
Since 2006, she has been working as a Lead Consultant in Regional Anaesthetist in the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and a lead in Perioperative Care and Day Surgery service.
She have developed a Regional Anaesthesia Service, unique to her hospital, where patients can undergo operative procedures without having to go to sleep, by just having regional blocks, numbing only the relevant body parts on which they are having the procedure. This option gives patients the power to choose whether they want to stay awake during the operation. They can listen to the music of their choice or watch a film through a laptop whilst having their operation, taking away the stress and anxiety that is typically associated with operations, as well as aiding the recovery process. It is also a safer anaesthetic technique as it avoids the risk of general anaesthetic and its effects on vital organs such as the heart and lungs. She has prepared information leaflets for patients which provide them with an overview of what to expect whilst having the operation. She also developed a ‘Blocks Trolley’ for the operating theatres, where all equipment is made available on a single trolley which can be simply wheeled when anaesthetist is planning a regional block. This gives them the ease of having everything at doctors’ fingertips, so that they can focus entirely on the procedure. She has facilitated the purchasing of top-tier ultrasound machines for the regional blocks in her hospital. She also have developed a post-operative follow-up service, where nurses contact patients, once they have returned home following their operations, to ensure that the patients are comfortable and satisfied.
Medical Teaching and Training
Anaesthesia is the largest single clinical specialty in the NHS. The Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCOA) is the professional body responsible for overseeing and regulating the specialty across the UK. The RCOA supports training, research, and examinations. She feels privileged to have been invited to teach on the RCOA’s organised teaching courses and workshops, both within the College itself as well as nationally. She also organises and runs regional anaesthesia courses in her NHS Trust, with delegates attending from a variety of different hospitals and NHS Trusts. She has introduced anatomical models and simulators to improve training, and this is not commonly used in other places. Due to this she consistently receives excellent feedback for her courses every year. Her role as a Perioperative Lead demands regular teaching and training sessions with pre-assessment nurses, medical students, and junior doctors. She supports and leads the pre-assessment team, consisting of pre-assessment consultants, nurses, administrative staff, and anaesthetists from all levels. She is an excellent leader of being a good communicator, decision-maker, and motivator.
Professional Awards
The Clinical Excellence Awards scheme recognises and rewards NHS consultants in England who perform over and above the standard expected of their role. It aims to reward consultants who are the greatest contributors to the delivery of safe and high-quality care, and to the overall improvement of services. She has been awarded with 3 competitive CEA Awards so far. She also is recognised as one of the most influential women in her NHS Trust for International Women’s Day 2023.
Raising Funds for the Breast Care Unit in the UK and an Orphanage in India
On International Women's Day 2021, Dr Pradhan organised an educational charity event to raise awareness within the community of the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle, and this helped to raise funds for the Breast Care Unit. This initiative was supported by the Health Tree Charity Foundation. The event included health talks and a session on mindfulness, followed by a dance workshop as a physical activity session. This event was covered and publicised by BBC Radio Humberside, for which they interviewed her on their live radio broadcast to promote the event. She tried raising enough funds to invest in equipment that is now helping to detect early-stage breast cancer in women, increasing their chances of being fully cured.
She strongly believes that one should give back to those in need however possible, and this is what motivated her to help charities.
She supports an orphanage in Mumbai, Janani-Aashish Charitable Trust, which looks after young children aged 0-6 years. She says" I strongly believe that donating to charity helps to foster a sense of community and social responsibility. It allows us as individuals to contribute to the common good of society and become part of a larger community.".
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the orphanage suffered badly. To help them, she organised a charity event in the UK and generated £2000 worth of donations. These donations meant that the orphanage could provide food and medicines to the children. This gave her a deep sense of gratitude and satisfaction. She is thankful to all the donors who supported her in this venture. The pandemic was particularly hard for her as, by being an anaesthetist, She was on the frontline as she had to support critically ill patients. All healthcare professionals and staff members in her hospital worked tirelessly and, as a senior colleague, she took the time to talk to and offer her moral support to them. She valued the time that she spent with them in those trying times as this helped to uplift everyone’s spirits, and further demonstrated her the power of compassion and courage. The risk of death was higher in Asian doctors, and she lost few of her friends and colleagues which was both heart-breaking and demoralising. However, the gratitude that she felt from her charitable efforts allowed her to remain positive, determined and focused on helping others during the pandemic.
Culinary Passion
Dr Pradhan loves to cook and bake. Living in the UK versus living in India, has its differences. For instance, it is extremely hard and costly to find domestic help in the UK. This can be challenging for Dr Pradhan alongside being a doctor. She particularly enjoys making healthy and nutritious meals. She always strives to use fresh ingredients, less oil, almost no sugar, and does not like to rely on pre-prepared and pre-packaged meals. She always uses an array of herbs and spices, and natural ingredients like spinach and beetroot to add colour to her meals. She enjoys making roti (flatbread) by adding spinach and avocado to increase its nutritional value. She receive compliments from my friends and family for my healthy and creative recipes. She has also won a cooking prize in a Diwali event organised by a National organisation in the UK.
Contributions to the Asian Community in the UK
Living away from your home country can make you feel nostalgic at times. Dr Pradhan feels she is fortunate to have a big Asian community in her town, consisting of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Nepalese. Amongst those in the Asian community, especially those that are elderly, there are often moments of feeling low when there are festivities happening back in their home countries. Dr Pradhan regularly gets involved with organising community events and cultural activities, while encouraging Asian families to participate. Dr Pradhan with her friends cooks meals in the community centre. This way, the community spirit is kept alive, and everyone feels included and supported.Eco-Friendliness and Efforts to Preserve the Environmentent
Dr Pradhan lives in the countryside, and so is blessed to have all forms of wildlife around. She has filled her garden with as many native plants as possible, attracting many bees and butterflies.She has created a more attractive and pleasant environment for all wildlife by carefully looking after the flowers, plants, trees and bushes in her garden. She has also added a birdbath and a pond to the garden, which regularly attracts foxes, squirrels, ducks and birds. The pond is its own ecosystem, being the home to a variety of fish, frogs, insects and algae. She has made a compost heap in her garden which is surprisingly valuable in helping to attract a wide range of animals to my garden. This compost heap comprises of grass trimmings from after she has mowed the lawn, and this provides with a natural fertiliser that is far more eco-friendly than chemical fertilisers. She has created a vegetable patch growing vegetables like beetroot, chillies, tomatoes and fenugreek. She also grows some organic fruits and herbs in her garden such as apples, plums, pears, berries, mint and coriander. It gives her a lot of pleasure to distribute the varied produce to her friends and elderly neighbours.
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