��«Ӱҵ

Originally published in ��«Ӱҵ Star, 05/11/2021

��«Ӱҵ Medical School teaches you about health and social inequalities but nothing prepared me for what I learned on student placement with a charity supporting the city’s sex workers. 

The Medicine Community Partnership Placements scheme run by the Medical School is part of the University of ��«Ӱҵ’s Made Together commitment to improving the health of all kinds of communities across the region.

Most students go for placements with hospices or primary schools but I chose the ��«Ӱҵ Working Women’s Opportunities Project (SWWOP) because I wanted to see into a world that was distant from my own life.

When I first spotted the volunteering opportunity I had visions of the film Pretty Women in my head but even the raw and uncompromising words of The Arctic Monkeys’ song, When the Sun Goes Down, don’t fully describe the realities facing sex workers in the city’s most deprived neighbourhoods.

SWWOP uses a van to make contact with women involved in street prostitution and provide an outreach service, offering free condoms, needle exchange, food, and information about “dodgy punters”- warning women when a customer is known to be abusive and potentially dangerous. 

Inside the van it feels warm and safe. There’s a kitchen cabinet, a kettle, and heaps of homemade sandwiches. Some of the women who come in look pale, thin, and cold. They help themselves appreciatively to the sandwiches. Many of them depend on their customers for somewhere to live.

Many of the women are quiet and seem lost. Some appear restless and detached. Foil is a regular request, and I was directed to a cabinet of drawers in which there was a clinical display of sterile needles and other drug paraphernalia. Unlike me, the support worker is masterful at disguising her concern. After hearing some of their stories of abuse, I was overwhelmed by the urge to stop these women stepping off the van into the cold night.

I worked with SWWOP at their own HQ but my time working with them in the city’s red light district before lockdown was haunting.

For the first time in Medical School, I felt empowered with the idea of being accountable to the people and communities that need our help most and don’t think I will ever forget the experience of that one night in a dark corner of the city. 

More than anything, it provided a powerful demonstration of why we, as doctors, must always place compassion and humanity at the heart of everything we do.

The Medicine Community Partnership Placements, and the wider Made Together programme which it is part of, gave me a unique chance to experience another side of life and I’m grateful. It will ultimately make me a better doctor and influence my relationship with the communities I serve throughout my career. 

I’m in my last year of studies now and am planning to stay in ��«Ӱҵ and keen to start a career in hospital medicine. I have not decided on a speciality yet but am really interested in women's health and would love to go out on the SWWOP van as a qualified doctor.