Tamasin’s journey to being a public health consultant

Tamasin realised while studying for her first degree in psychology that she was interested in medicine and entered medical school via graduate entry. She didn’t realise she was dyslexic until she was working as a consultant and so didn’t receive any adjustments during medical school or specialty training.

Looking back, she can see that the lack of adjustments had a huge impact on her. Her evenings and weekends were dominated by additional studying and trying to keep up, with a huge effect on her personal life and stress levels.

One of her biggest challenges was passing the public health obstructive structured clinical examination assessment. ‘The way it’s designed could not be worse for people with dyslexia. I couldn’t process information in the way needed for the exam.’

Tamasin knew she loved and was skilled in public health medicine and so the experience of initially failing this assessment three times was deeply demoralising. Nobody ever asked why she was finding it so difficult, and Tamasin thought the only solution was to work even harder.

Tamasin wonders if more visibility of dyslexia could have prompted her to an earlier diagnosis. She wishes she’d known then, as she does know, that doctors are a diverse group, and some doctors are dyslexic.

The transformative impact of reasonable adjustments

Tamasin shared that the most impactful adjustment has been additional administrative support. Her administrative assistant helps with a vast array of tasks, including printing and organising documents, sorting and prioritising emails, and diary and deadline management. This removes stress for Tamasin and means she can get on with the public health work that she is highly skilled in.

Read-aloud software is also helpful and means Tamasin can listen to written work. She’s excited by the thought that technological advances will continue to come up with innovative ways to support dyslexic people.

Recognition from occupational health that she needs additional time to complete written work has also been a huge help.

Workplaces need better awareness of reasonable adjustments

The Equality Act 2010 places a statutory duty on employers to provide reasonable adjustments to disabled staff. However, like many other disabled doctors and medical students, Tamasin has struggled at times to get the reasonable adjustments she is entitled to.

‘It shouldn’t be a huge battle to get adjustments, and it shouldn’t be seen as unfairly giving someone special treatment. It doesn’t make sense to treat everyone the same when people have different needs.’

Tamasin experienced a big setback in 2022 when her administrative support was significantly reduced, despite telling her workplace how much it was needed as a reasonable adjustment. The stress this caused resulted in her needing to take sick leave. This could have been avoided had there been better understanding of the importance of reasonable adjustments. 

Dyslexic doctors bring unique viewpoints and valuable contributions

Public health medicine deals with long-term, complex and multi-faceted problems. The different ways in which Tamasin thinks is an asset for navigating these. She is good at brainstorming different solutions and has an instinctive understanding of the persistence needed to solve them.

Tamasin’s dyslexia means she finds it easier working with shorter documents and plain and simple language. She’s good at simplifying things and making them reader friendly. Her colleagues have commented on how efficient and readable the work she produces is and the benefits of this.

Another part of being dyslexic for Tamasin is that she usually needs to read a document three times to fully take it in. Although this takes more time, it also means that she develops a deeper and more detailed understanding of what she is working on.

It’s time to end negative stereotypes about dyslexia

Tamasin works closely with Dyslexia Scotland to campaign for better support for people with dyslexia. Alongside better support, Tamasin wants to disrupt the negative stereotypes about dyslexia.

‘There’s a harmful and mistaken assumption that dyslexic people are lazy and stupid. This just isn’t evidence-based. Dyslexic people think differently and process information differently and that’s not a bad thing.’

Tamasin’s advice for neurodivergent medical students and doctors

Tamasin highlighted that the medical system has been largely designed for neurotypical people by neurotypical people. This means that there can be challenges for people who think differently, process information differently and have different strengths and needs. But – the important thing is that systems can be changed.

Neurodivergent and disabled doctors are a hugely important part of the medical profession and can play a role in changing systems to be more inclusive, supportive and celebratory of different strengths and contributions.

‘I want dyslexic medical students to know that, with the right support, anything they want to achieve is possible.’

Tamasin Knight is a consultant in public health medicine in NHS Scotland, deputy chair of the BMA public health medicine committee and a passionate advocate for celebrating and supporting dyslexia, which is a type of neurodivergence