Average Black Surgeon
The Red Football Boots
In 1998, football boots were black. I found a pair of red ones on Carnaby Street. What I wanted them to do had very little to do with kicking a ball.
Average Black Surgeon
Average Black Surgeon is a lived memoir of becoming, enduring, and choosing. From childhood and identity to surgical training, bias, resilience, and visibility, it traces how discipline, community, and self-belief are forged under pressure. Honest, reflective, and ongoing, it explores the cost of excellence, the responsibility of representation, and the quiet decisions that shape a surgeon’s life—and legacy.
Average Black Surgeon
Always Be Closing
Before I became a surgeon, I sold door to door. Some strangers bought. Some slammed the door. Some threatened to shoot me. None of it was on the syllabus. All of it ended up in theatre.
Average Black Surgeon
Rest Is Not Always Stopping
My study buddy told me to finish one thing before starting another. She was right. But it took me years to realise I had also been right, and that the two lessons were not in conflict.
Average Black Surgeon
The perfect time
Twenty years ago I would not have believed this sentence. There has never been a better time to be a Black surgeon in the UK. Perfect is another matter.
Average Black Surgeon
The Black Quarterback
You can have the title, the ability, the exact right position — and still, when you call the play, there's hesitation. In surgery, that fraction of a second isn't abstract.
Average Black Surgeon
Go Round the Back
ST3. My own deanery. A room full of people who knew me. The score came back six out of fifty. What I did next changed the entire direction of my career — but not in the way you'd expect.
Average Black Surgeon
Allowed to Decide
"Everyone told me to." It's understandable. It might even be relevant. But it's not a sentence I'd want to say to a patient. So how do you listen to a room without being ruled by it?
Average Black Surgeon
There Is No Neutral
I used to think there were three types of leaders: those for you, those against you, and the neutral ones. I don't believe that anymore. In surgery, neutrality has a price.
Average Black Surgeon
Less Than Full Time, More Than a Surgeon
I worried about the money. I worried about falling behind on cases. Then my ARCP panel made a decision about my confidence before I'd been given the chance to prove them wrong.
Average Black Surgeon
Knocking on Doors
Fourteen-hour days, slammed doors, and a summer in small-town America that taught me more about survival than any textbook. Then a gravel drive, an older man on a porch, and six words I never forgot.
Average Black Surgeon
The Burden of Proof
There is a question I have spent most of my life answering. Nobody has ever asked it out loud. Instead, they ask a thousand smaller ones — and I have learnt, eventually, to hear what they really mean.
Average Black Surgeon
Who Are You Trying to Please?
Everyone tells you to impress your consultants, your seniors, the panel. No one tells you what happens when they all want something different — or that satisfying them might cost you the one thing that actually matters.