Dr Orlando Trujillo-Bueno
Dr Orlando Trujillo-Bueno was born in Colombia in 1958 and came to London in 1990. He describes his long struggle to be recognised as a doctor in this country, and the impact this had on his sense of himself.
Listen to Orlando (mp3, 1mb)
Transcript
'The trouble is I was not even allowed to sit this exam. And the reason the General Medical Council gave me is that because my primary qualifications was not recognised by the General Medical Council. Wow. What a shock. That to me was a real, real bad news.
'I felt at the time at the lowest of the lowest, honestly. Because, yeah I felt that I not only have no sense of belonging and identity, but also I felt that my confidence was totally lost. And I felt that I might have been telling lies you know, I might have been saying I am this and other people is saying to me you are not. I thought I was calling myself a doctor and I wasn’t. I couldn’t understand this…
'Nowadays, when I am invited to give talks about, you know, how to survive and resilience, capacity in surviving when you are a refugee, I can see all the struggle I have done to compensate a lot of gaps. And that’s why I was saying the other time the only thing I have been missing is to wear a pointed hat with stars on it; because this is what I was trying to do, I was trying to juggle all these things, the difficulties, and survive.
'For a lot of reasons things changed. And I got a letter from the GMC that I was allowed to sit the exams again, at least to be recognised, my qualifications being recognised by the GMC at the time, in 2000… Obviously when I had my exams and I put my papers to the GMC, finally I obtained my GMC registration.
'And I thought one day, long ago, the day I will be obtaining my GMC registration will be the day that I will go to the highest mountain in this country - actually I am lucky it is not Switzerland [laughs] - and I will climb up and I will scream out loud there, to the four corners of earth. That’s how intense I felt.'
Copyright Evelyn Oldfield Unit