Rosalynd is a general surgeon with a sub-specialty interest in breast and endocrine surgery. She lives in Nelson with her husband and two daughters aged 13 years and nine years. Rosalynd had her eldest daughter while she was a basic trainee, and her second daughter amid her advanced training.

• How does your specialty fit in with your family?
  I have a very supportive family and my kids have grown up knowing what being on call means and are unfortunately used to mummy being away a lot.
• Do you have any advice for doctors-in-training who are thinking about balancing a career and kids?
  Be aware that it is not easy, don’t imagine that you can do it all or expect kids or your speciality college to fit around you. There will be sacrifices and you will miss some critical stuff. You cannot make excuses to your trainers because you have kids. It’s not fair on your colleagues to not do your job properly.
• How has a medical career affected your family?
  As I said, I have children who probably know too much about on call and have had to manage without mum at times. However they are happy independent kids and I don’t think they have been too scarred!
• What support do you get from your family?
  My parents are in the UK so I have been very reliant on my husband in terms of child minding.
• How have you managed your training while bringing up a family?
  There was no part-time training when I came through and no potential for it, so I have really had to function as if I did not have kids. I had three months off for my first child, and six months off for my second. This has changed now and I am on the selection committee for general surgery. We now have many interruptions for maternity leave and part time training, so it has improved.
• How did you find the support from your college?
  There was none and when I got pregnant on the scheme I was told I would have to take a year off. However a friend was transferring to paediatric surgery so we managed to do half a year each.
• What, if any, problems did you encounter when returning to training?
  I returned full time as there was no part-time training. I found it very hard to leave my daughters. I also found that it took a while to regain my confidence as I felt I had forgotten a lot.
• How did you/Did you maintain CME while on maternity leave?
  I had the maximum of six months and came into the weekly registrar teaching.
• If you were just graduating from medical school again, what would you do differently?
  I wouldn’t do anything differently as such, but if there was another speciality I liked I would pick that over surgery which is fairly unforgiving and inflexible. Unfortunately surgery is my love!