Dr Nikki Turner knew she wanted to be a doctor when she was just six years old. Now, she’s an academic GP, is a founder of the Immunisation Advisory Centre and leads a university research team which focuses on respiratory disease.
No one in Nikki’s family is in medicine.
But that didn’t stop a six-year-old Nikki from having big dreams.
“I wanted to be a doctor since the age of six when I decided to focus on people rather than wanting to rescue animals.
“Somewhat simplistically back then, it seemed a great job where I could be helpful and useful.”
All of which is true.
Nikki wears many hats – splitting her time between being an academic general practitioner and working in public health – all in the hope of empowering communities to help save lives.
It was the arrival of COVID-19 that really brought respiratory disease to the forefront.
“There is increased awareness, b
ut there is still a large amount of severe illness, and – at times – death, that is preventable with better approaches across many areas from policy and systems to health literacy,” she says.
“We have excellent tools to improve health, but often our systems do not function the best to empower our communities to utilise them effectively, so we use research to help these gnarly complex issues.”
Nikki views science as “a shared accumulation of knowledge to help make some sense and support rational thinking”.
“Science doesn’t offer answers, but it is a useful grounded tool in a complex difficult world, it helps to stop us going down personality-driven rabbit holes.”
A career in science allowed Nikki – as a woman – to have a voice and be respected, she says.
“It also has allowed me to work collegially with some amazing other women. I don’t want alone, and it is a joy to be part of a like-minded community.”
