Northern Health hosted a virtual breakfast this week to celebrate International Women’s Day.
The event featured special guest speakers, including Northern Health Foundation board member Elizabeth Batten, Northern Health and Barbados’ first ever vascular and edovascular surgeon Nina Yhap
Ms Batten was born and raised in Epping and surrounding areas, and has a strong connection with the north.
The Batten family have contributed significantly to Northern Health Foundation. Some of the equipment in Northern Hospital’s neonatal unit was donated by the Batten Foundation.
“Through the family trust, I’ve seen the impact that it has on the hospitals and what they have been able to purchase. Now, having had children myself and having gone through the public health system, I realise how important different equipment really is and the good that it has done – and I wanted to be a part of that,” Ms Batten said.
Dr Yhap has worked as a Northern Health vascular fellow and is now the first ever vascular and endovascular surgeon in Barbados.
“When you are a little girl, especially in Barbados, you don’t necessarily get exposed to big professions. I wanted to be a teacher, then wanted to work in hotel management and anything interesting I saw around me,” she said.
She said she was named after her maternal grandmother who was a primary school teacher, and also worked on
a farm.
“My mum was one of five daughters. I was raised in a family where women were the power source, and all of my aunts had girls. Sitting around my grandmother’s kitchen table on a farm, I knew nothing else except girls being loud, confident and that our opinions matter. While the opinions of the men around us also mattered, I’ve seen the support males in our family showed to their partners.”
Dr Yhap is proud to be a woman in surgery, and even though most of her professors and mentors were men, she has always felt equal and appreciated, and highlights her time at Northern Health.
“I never felt disadvantaged or different. I felt like a surgeon, that happened to be a woman,” she added.
“In me, there are so many versions of so many women. Women who were homemakers, women who were professionals and academics. I think what’s great is we get to be the version that we want to be. Every woman I meet and get to speak to, and hear their stories, I get to admire them and think how I can replicate that.”
