We continue to celebrate International Women's Day this week by featuring Old Pangbournian, Jess Payne.

Jess Payne was at Pangbourne College in the late 1990s, early 2000s. After leaving school, she studied Medicine at Imperial College, London where she continued to enjoy playing hockey. Now, almost 20 years later she is a Senior Registrar (Senior Doctor) in intensive care and emergency medicine at The Royal London Hospital and training in pre-hospital medicine alongside these specialisms. 

From September 2020, together with her role at The Royal London, she has been a helicopter medic with the London’s Air Ambulance in an advanced critical care team which flies to patients who are critically unwell in the London catchment area, within the M25. Before then, she worked in intensive care at Queen’s Hospital, Romford, during the first waves of the pandemic. It has been a very busy 12 months!

She started her career in medicine as a foundation doctor in Chichester, where she was given the opportunity to learn about all types of medicine. For an adventure and because she likes travelling, she then moved to Australia for a couple of years where, while working in an emergency department, she studied for a Diploma in Tropical Medicine. 

At that time, she was considering specialising in infectious diseases and took the opportunity to travel to Ethiopia and Uganda to do some humanitarian work. But while there, she realised that emergency work was what she wanted to be a sub-specialist in.

Three years after she returned to England, she chose to take up intensive care as ‘another string to her bow’ while she worked in an emergency department role. This, she said, is because she likes to devote all of her attention to one patient and this is possible in an Intensive Therapy Unit (ITU) environment. She has been working in emergency and intensive care for the last eight years. 

Over the last two years, she has also decided to train in ‘pre-hospital medicine’ which involves going out with the ambulance service and addressing ‘trauma’ issues. This is a very different environment within which to work, but she said all three areas of medicine complement each other well and in each you have to be adaptable and flexible.

Since leaving school, she has learned to be more reflective, but what she said Pangbourne College gave her was an all-round experience. This has ensured she is now well prepared to cope with the challenges she faces because it gave her a good foundation from which she could become a good leader and good team player.

While talking recently to a paramedic, she reflected with them on how the team leadership, including the ceremonial traditions, and adventure training experience, in particular, at Pangbourne College prepared her well for what she is doing now. She said that they helped her understand how she interacted with others in a group, what her capabilities were, and what factors were relevant to helping bring out the best in others.

Thank you, Jess, so much for coming to talk to us!