From medicine to Human Rights - my journey from being a medical doctor to going back to university

When I told my friends and family that, after six years of medical school and one year of working as a junior doctor in a hospital, I wanted to go back to university to study Human Rights, I was met with surprise - and sometimes scepticism. "Why?" they asked.  I wanted to do both, continue working full-time in healthcare and study for a master’s degree at the same time. 

Studying medicine and working in healthcare can feel like a bubble - once you enter that world and become a doctor, you are often expected to follow a straight career path: start your medical training in the hospital, work endless shifts, complete your specialty, and maybe one day open your practice. Besides the fact that you can do a lot with medicine, I knew that the linear career was not for me.

Somewhere during medical school, while hearing about the fire in the Moria refugee camp on Lesvos, and the 2015 European migrant crisis, I decided I wanted to become a doctor to do humanitarian work. Medicine, I thought (and still believe), is universal and it is needed everywhere; it is a skill that can have a real, immediate impact. This and the fact that my parents are from a country dealing with serious human rights violations, shaped my interest in understanding human rights. 

After a year of working as a doctor in internal medicine, I decided to use the overtime hours I had accumulated at the hospital to join a medical NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) for a month, finally doing what I had set out to do.  

We were located in Athens, Greece, providing healthcare to refugees and people on the move, who mostly had fled through Turkey over the Mediterranean Sea to Greece, but also to people without permanent homes and sex workers. I listened to experiences of war, torture, displacement and violence while cleaning wounds, examining patients from children to pregnant women and the elderly, and providing medication. While working in different, overcrowded refugee camps in tiny tents, I began to ask myself why all of this was happening in the first place. Here, I understood that I had a broad idea of human rights, healthcare is a human right, but what was the law behind it? How do we secure human rights? Why are we failing these people? 

I compared a couple of human rights programmes in Europe, and the University of London distance learning programme was an easy choice, with its opportunity to hear and learn about the voices from various parts of the world. I liked the idea of a more practical approach to international law rather than a pure theoretical one. The option of a distance learning model was also essential to my wish to continue pursuing my medical career.  

It has not always been easy to balance both at the same time. I never had to analyse texts and write essays in medical school, especially not in English as my third language. Fulfilling deadlines while being on call or working night shifts in the emergency room had been particularly draining at times, but studying human rights has been and still is deeply fulfilling.  

There is a German word called “Ohnmachtsgefühl,” which can be translated as “feeling of powerlessness.” I felt this a lot about hearing about human rights violations before I started studying. 

For me, studying human rights is about understanding the systems behind violence and finding a language to fight for human rights. I am still as angry and frustrated as I was when I heard about the injustices people face all over the world, but it doesn't anger me the way it used to. Speaking to my fellow students and professors who have dedicated their lives to a passion we share made me feel less alone. I felt privileged. 

I am still working full-time as a doctor (in fact, I am writing this blog post during my night shift right now - do not worry, there are no patients!) I am also still studying and will soon be facing my master's thesis. Medicine and Human rights are deeply connected, and I feel like I have finally found my path. 

Rosa studies MA Human Rights in Hamburg, Germany.