Meet our new Specialty and Associate Specialist (SAS) Doctor Lead

We’re delighted to introduce our new Specialty and Associate Specialist (SAS) Doctor Lead, Dr Sophie Nicholls. In this role, Sophie will help us to better engage and support SAS doctors in sexual and reproductive healthcare (SRH).

SAS doctors make up a large proportion of doctors working in SRH – often working in senior roles within their departments – with many SRH services being led by SAS doctors.

However, SAS doctors may not always have the same support for career development as CSRH trainees or Consultants. When they are ready or want to pursue further training, they can be hampered by service obligations, lack of funding or management support.

We want to help rectify this by engaging with our SAS doctor workforce and building a better understanding of their needs and challenges, so that we can work to address them. This is where our new SAS doctor lead, Sophie Nicholls, comes in.

Our new SAS doctor lead

In this role, Sophie will be engaging with SAS doctors in the SRH workforce to better understand their needs and challenges. She will provide a voice for SAS doctors at committee meetings with staff and clinicians across the FSRH, with the aim of finding ways for us to provide better support.

Sophie currently works at Solent NHS Trust as a specialty doctor in their sexual health team. During her training as a GP she developed an interest in SRH, and worked as a specialty doctor in SRH for five years after completing her training. When she left for Australia in 2017, she worked as a GP specialising in women’s health. She also helped to set up a new vasectomy service with Family Planning New South Wales before returning to work in the UK in 2019 as a specialty doctor.

Read more about Sophie in her bio.

Share your thoughts on how we can support SAS doctors

If you’re a SAS doctor working within SRH, and would like share your thoughts on how we can better support you, please get in contact with Sophie at snicholls@fsrh.org