Dumfries Infirmary medic wins best doctor accolade
dailyrecord.co.ukA Dumfries Infirmary medic has been named as the country’s best doctor.Dr Freda Newlands, from the Stewartry, won the accolade at the Who Cares Wins awards on Tuesday.Hosted by Davina McCall, the awards celebrate healthcare heroes from the frontline NHS staff to the ordinary people who go above and beyond.A TV show featuring all the winners will be aired on Channel 4 and All 4 at 6.30pm on Sunday.Dr Newlands, 62, is an emergency medicine specialist and has travelled the world providing urgent medical care to those in need, most recently spending two months in Ukraine with the frontline medical aid charity, UK-Med.She has also spent time working in Jordan, Bhutan, Gaza, as well as Bangladesh where she treated patients in the Rohingya refugee camps during the deadly diptheria outbreak in 2017.She was inspired to get into medicine as a youngster growing up watching the news but became a biology teacher before starting medical school as a mature student in 2004.Her first overseas post came in 2014, when she was posted on the northern Jordan border with Medecins Sans Frontieres.Dr Newlands said: “It was harrowing and what I saw there remains some of the worst injuries I’ve had to treat.
Children with really awful bomb blast injuries, mine blasts, three limb amputees, horrific burns. It was my job to stabilise patients as an emergency doctor so they could go on to have surgery and rehabilitation.”When she returned home, she registered as a member of UK-Med and worked in Bangladesh until 2018.
From 2018 until 2019, she was part of the UK-Med co-ordination team.She worked for NHS Dumfries and Galloway as an emergency department doctor during the Covid-19 pandemic and travelled to Ukraine less than a week after the war had
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