Our Clinical Director, Dr Catherine Lewis, was recently recognised for her outstanding achievement and drive by being presented with the Women in Health award at the West Country Women Awards.
Catherine qualified as a Doctor in her mid-twenties and spent 18 years of her career as a GP in an area of high urban deprivation in Bridgwater. She chose this particular role as she wanted to give back and says that she felt her patients were truly appreciative of the care the practice provided.
In 2021, funding cuts forced the closure of her GP Practice and Catherine was left with a tough decision to make about her future, but when the opportunity arose to buy into a small Occupational Health consultancy (SOH Vanilla Occupational Health) and retrain as an Occupational Health Doctor, everything clicked into place and Catherine realised this was what she wanted to do.
Catherine soon realised how vitally important yet under delivered Occupational Health is to the working population. Running an Occupational Health Provider was a steep learning curve but something that Catherine felt passionately about.
Catherine now has a Diploma in Occupational Medicine and is well on her way to achieving her MSc.
“I’m delighted to have been awarded with the Women in Health award. To have been nominated was fantastic, but winning was far beyond my expectations.”
Catherine has grown the business with great determination, achieving a three-fold increase in the size of the business within an 18-month period and merging the company with another Occupational Health Provider based in Devon (Amber Occupational Health) which has enabled the resulting company, Aardvark Occupational Health, to provide our services across the entirety of the South West.
Catherine spotted the huge value in removing a barrier that companies have when thinking about providing occupational health services to their employees, namely “We haven’t got a suitable space to provide this”, and set about creating a fleet of bespoke Mobile Medical Centres which contain everything needed to offer our services when and where they are needed, including the space to perform the required assessments.
Aardvark is growing rapidly and always has an eye on how they can support employees in other ways. Catherine has grand ambitions for Aardvark and is pushing ahead with making them a reality.
“This isn’t the end though. Here at Aardvark, we’re just getting started”