Insights from Media Medic: Dr Philippa Kaye

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Watch back our shared experience session live at Hanover offices in London with Dr Philippa Kaye. This was an insightful session and thought provoking session in Collaboration with Hanover Communications.

Biography: Dr Philippa Kaye

Dr Philippa Kaye is a GP, author, journalist and mother.  This means that she is busy, really busy and while others may dream of long indulgent weekends, she dreams of a lie in until 8.30am – that extra hour and a half makes all the difference, ask any parent!

Philippa is one of those irritating clichés, she really did always want to be a doctor, apart from a very brief spell of aspiring to be a ballerina (also a cliché, sorry). But she has always been fascinated by science and by people and medicine is a career which thankfully combines the two. She grew up in a very large and noisy family, where everyone knows everything about everybody. This may have led to her becoming quite nosy, some people may prefer the term ‘interested’, but the truth is, she is nosy, but as a doctor this can be a great thing because a bit of nosiness helps to find out about people which may in turn affect their health.

Dr Philippa is a Londoner and only moved away for three years while studying at Downing College Cambridge, before returning to Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’ medical school for her clinical training. Once qualified she started having babies all in the midst of training in paediatrics, gynaecology, care of the elderly and acute medicine, psychiatry and then general practice.  She now works as a GP in both privately and for the NHS, before running home to the chaos of a house with a husband and three children.​Dr Philippa knows that one of the core skills of medicine is being able to translate ‘medicalese’ into English and has used this skill to write multiple books on subjects ranging from pregnancy to child health and development. Her last book Doctors Get Cancer Too is her memoir of being 39 years old, a busy dr and mother when she was diagnosed with bowel cancer and was an Amazon bestseller, while her previous book The M Word: Everything you need to know about the menopause reached number 2 in the Amazon charts. The second edition of The M word is released in Jan 2023 and she has a further book release in March entitled Breasts: An Owner’s Guide (published DK). She is the medical expert for That’s Life and My Weekly Special magazines after holding long tenures at Woman and Woman &Home, and regularly contributes to the print and online press.  She is passionate about helping educate and empower as many people as she can which has led to a role as the Ann Summers sexual health GP. She is regularly seen on the sofa on television on This Morning, Talk TV and various news programmes on both radio and television.

Below is a link to Dr Philippa explaining what happens during cervical screening, a smear test.  The clip has been viewed worldwide more than 15.4 million times!

​https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-42774652/what-happens-during-a-smear-test

As with many working mums, Dr Philippa has a second job – parenthood, which truth be told is often tougher than the doctor day job! Most of her spare time is taken up with family and she is happiest cooking in her kitchen surrounding by family and friends, talking, eating and laughing, a lot; or she will be when we are out of lockdown!

Dr Philippa Kaye was once optimistically measured at 5 ft and ¾ of an inch. That ¾ of an inch is very important to her and should not be forgotten.



Insights from Media Medic: Dr Philippa Kaye

2023-09-07

32 minutes