Dr Neslyn Watson-Druée could have gone to Canada to nurse but chose England “because my father served in World War Two here and I wanted to see what the country was like … also my paternal grandmother is first generation Scots and Irish and I wanted that connection.” Her parents were not keen. “My father felt that nursing was a very underpaid profession and he felt that I should stay and complete my A levels and enter the teaching profession. I disagreed with him … and in some ways I wasn’t absolutely 100 per cent straight … I said I was going on holiday and at that time he had to sign my passport because you had to be 21 before you could sign for your passport in those days. For me it was quite a bit of, I suppose, exploration really and when I think back now I don’t know how I had the courage to do that, but I did.”

Both of Professor John Parboosingh’s parents were physicians and his sister was also going into medicine. As he says: “I didn’t have much choice really. At the age of 17 after high school examinations I applied to the University of Edinburgh and was successful as a candidate for the faculty of medicine. I came over to the UK in 1957 by plane. I was on my own, but I was coming to two sisters who were already in London. I was excited.”

Dr Moonsawmy outside his surgery in Loanhead, 2005

Dr Jean Parboosingh had wanted to pursue a medical career from an early age. “I came to Britain in 1959. My grandparents were still alive in Edinburgh at the time and my older brother had already gone to Edinburgh to study a year ahead of me and so I had family there. I was 18 when I left Jamaica and I travelled by ship and was met by my brother and an aunt who were also in the London area at the time.”

Dr Stanley Moonsawmy’s father influenced his decision to study medicine. “I was thinking of a medical career … I came to study medicine at Edinburgh University as arranged and for which I had applied a few months before as most of my father’s friends were Edinburgh graduates in medicine and therefore I was more or less influenced by him to come here to study medicine.”