Medic – and More!

Ashish Kalraiya’s new role as an Orthopaedic Registrar sees him working in hospitals across North West London.

By passing his MRCS examinations and thus qualifying as a surgeon, Ashish (OE 1997–2004) reached a new milepost in a career that had already seen him secure a degree in Management and win plaudits for developing mobile phone applications – in addition to his medical successes.

Ashish looks back on his time at QE, where he returned as Guest of Honour at the 2011 Junior Awards Ceremony, with both fondness and gratitude. “As I've always said, nothing could have been achieved without the help and support of QE and all its staff. So that really has set the foundation for my career.”

After leaving QE in 2004, Ashish spent the next six years at Imperial College, where he graduated from the Medical School with an MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) qualification and also took a first in BSc Management at Imperial’s Business School.

From 2010–2012 he worked as a Foundation Doctor in North London, before moving to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, to train in Trauma and Orthopaedics for eight months. “That was a fantastic experience for gaining exposure to complex trauma – for example, from road traffic accidents. I received great training from extremely friendly and diligent surgeons. It’s a great country as well, full of history, culture and safari.” (He went back to Africa in late 2015, undertaking some work in orthopaedics in Malawi to obtain further exposure to high-trauma environments.)

Following his return from South Africa in 2012, he worked as a surgical house officer in North London, including a spell close to the School in the Orthopaedic Department at Barnet General Hospital, which, he said, felt as though he had come full-circle, given that he completed his first-ever work experience at the hospital as a 16-year-old after GCSEs.

Ashish has also developed applications for healthcare staff to use to eradicate ward inefficiencies and save money for the hospital. The app, which is called MediShout, has been successfully trialled and was a finalist in two awards schemes. In 2014, Ashish was himself a finalist in the Rising Star category of the EHI Awards, which recognise excellence in healthcare IT in the UK.