The University of Buckingham Medicine Graduation honours Dr Nighat Arif

On 4 July, students from the Medicine 2020 cohort graduated from The University of Buckingham. These students first began their studies in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic – an incredibly uncertain and difficult time to begin a medical degree. It was a pleasure to celebrate their accomplishments and recognise their hard work and resilience.

The graduation ceremony also honoured special guest, Dr Nighat Arif, Doctor of Science, honoris causa. Dr Nighat is a GP specialising in women’s health, family planning and menopause care with over 16 years of experience in the NHS. She also runs her own private practice and is the resident Doctor on BBC Breakfast and ITV This Morning.

Dr Nighat was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and in September 2023, she formed The Health Collective in partnership with Dame Lesley Regan to help map grassroots organisations in the UK to ensure equitable access to healthcare and appropriate nuanced policies as part of the Women’s Health Strategy. Alongside this, she is a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire.

Following the graduation ceremony, Dr Nighat was interviewed on her accomplishments, and thoughts on the health sector.

Read the interview below:

Question: Having practiced in the Buckinghamshire area, how does it feel to be attending the University for these new medical graduates?

Answer: Oh, it’s so exciting because it’s so lovely to be local, but also see the incredible fresh blood (no pun intended!) and crop of medical students at a time when, as someone who works in the NHS, we desperately do need new doctors; fresh blood that’s within the system, and also fresh ideas, I think that’s what The University of Buckingham represents.

Question: With the next generation of practitioners graduating today and across the year in the UK, what are you most excited to see from them in the future?

Answer: I want to see fresh ideas, I want to see the enthusiasm and the passion, because I think there’s only so far that you can get as a medical student if you don’t have passion. It’s hard work, it’s gruelling work and it’s work that is unrewarded. I can say that as a doctor of 18 years who works in the NHS, but to see that passion will hopefully drive me to go, yes, we can do better, and we can do more, which is exactly the sort of atmosphere that Buckingham has harnessed.

Question: In 2023, you were presented the Point of Light Award for raising awareness on women’s health issues in the UK. Since then, have you recognised any significant change in those areas?

Answer: So, I’m at the cusp of working on the Women’s Health Strategy with Professor Dame Leslie Regan. We have come on leaps and bounds. I think that the change regarding the menopause, the conversation around the menopause, and having NHS HRT prepayment certificates has gone a long way to empowering women. We do also have (for the first time in the UK) the Health Collective, which is mapping marginalised groups to look at where trust has been built with those communities which are hardly reached or very easily ignored, so that we can empower those communities when it comes to women’s health, which is something that’s never been done before.

I’m very aware that we are a global nation now. The pandemic has shown us that we work globally rather than instantly in our own countries. And so, we’ve got other countries who are watching the success of the Women’s Health Strategy and what we can achieve.
The other change that we’ve had a huge empowerment in is the fact that we all agree that women’s health needs to be better. We cannot stay where we are. So, women and girls need to do far, far better. And I think that, as we talk today on the 4 July, which is election polling day, it was interesting to note that none of the party manifestos had women’s health as one of their objectives. And that just shows that although we have made some strides in having the first Women’s Health Strategy, a 10 year strategy, which is all parliamentary agreement, the parties didn’t have it in their manifestos. This shows that we’ve got a long way to go.

I hope that in 10 years’ time that there has been leaps and bounds and that the parliamentary groups have taken women’s health seriously.

Question: You spent a lot of time advocating and representing doctors on the BBC, ITV and online. What would you say is the most important aspect of transferring this knowledge into the world of TV and online?

Answer: Make it lay-term, make it interesting and keep it rooted in evidence-based data. The difference between anybody else giving information and a doctor, is the responsibility and the gravitas of what you’re saying. The weight of what medics and medical doctors say is still insurmountably powerful compared to someone who isn’t a medic that imparts medical information. I always think about the information I’m saying, and what the data behind that is. Is it translatable within the NHS? And are the masses able to access it?

We do still have postcode lotteries when it comes to healthcare provisions as well and I think that the only way to make sure that you are accurate is to then do clinical medicine, which is my bread and butter.

As much as it’s lovely to come and see medical students on their graduation days and have these sort of “icing on the cake” moments, my bread and butter is still being in the clinic three times a week, seeing patients every 10 to 15 minutes and dealing with the bureaucracy that is still unfortunately present within the NHS.

Question: And would you say there’s any specific concerns you may have or even hopes for that?

Answer: I think that we’ve got to understand that the population is changing, and the population is unfortunately having chronic health conditions, which the NHS was never built for. Gradually over time that has become paramount.

So, the NHS workforce plan has seen the introduction of pharmacy first, physicians’ associates, anaesthetic associates, and nursing associates, which don’t probably have that sort of level of intensive training, say as medical students do here at Buckingham. That change is going to be really interesting to see what happens as the plan of allied healthcare professionals providing care to patients goes out. It’s fine for acute small things, but nuance and more problematic complications are still where doctors will be needed, but that investment in doctors has to happen.

The morale is very low when it comes to doctors within the whole infrastructure. So, my hopes are that we need to deal with and tackle the doctor strikes, which are currently happening at the moment.

We’ve got to tackle that. We’ve got to look at workplace support for junior doctors who are coming through and medical students who are newly qualifying. We’ve got to tackle the demand on the service and how we make up the workforce in general, and then also how patients can self-advocate, self-look after themselves, and manage problems without needing healthcare, such as A&E. I think that is going to be the biggest struggle that we have as doctors. And I think for whoever comes in, this is going to be, I hope, at the top of their list.