Dame Averil Mansfield life started out in a humble Blackpool council house before she embarked on a remarkable career in the NHS
Life for Dame Averil Mansfield started off humble. Growing up in Blackpool in the late 1930s, her father was a welder and her mother stayed at home to look after the children and the house.
In the early 1990s, she was invited to set up an organisation through the Royal College Of Surgeons, called Women In Surgical Training, which later became Women In Surgery, to “encourage, enable and inspire” other females to follow her lead. Throughout her career, her motto was “lift as you climb”. Averil was born in 1937. Her dad was a welder and she had a stay-at-home mum who looked after their council house in Blackpool. Averil's interest in healthcare was sparked at the age of eight when she read a children’s book about surgery, setting her heart on becoming a surgeon.
After qualifying as a doctor in 1960, Averil trained as a vascular surgeon and became a consultant in Liverpool’s Broadgreen Hospital, and later at Hillingdon Hospital. She joined St Mary’s Hospital in London 10 years later, and in 1993 was appointed professor of surgery – the first woman in Britain to attain the position. And while she never doubted her ability, male colleagues did.
Averil also encountered male patients that would ask to speak to the “surgeon doing the operation” and would be shocked to discover it was her. Despite the thousands of intricate surgeries performed, Averil is very modest about her work. “It’s just plumbing that we do – new pipes for old,” she smiles. “It’s very lovely to win this Pride Of Britain award. But I don’t think of myself as a pioneer, I think of myself as a surgeon.”
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