It was strange­ly emo­tion­al to re­turn to the place which made me the doc­tor I am to­day.

While be­ing in Lon­don, where I did my gy­nae-on­col­o­gy train­ing, I was sur­prised by the wave of nos­tal­gia that came over me. Walk­ing through the hos­pi­tals where I spent so many years, see­ing for­mer col­leagues and friends, and even at­tend­ing the week­ly mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team meet­ing where new can­cer cas­es are dis­cussed, felt like step­ping back in time.

For a few hours, I could al­most see my younger self rush­ing through those hos­pi­tal cor­ri­dors—de­ter­mined to learn, ea­ger to op­er­ate, and com­pet­ing with my fel­low trainees. Every sur­gi­cal list was an op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Every clin­ic was a chance to learn. Train­ing was de­mand­ing, ex­haust­ing, and ex­hil­a­rat­ing all at once. Look­ing back, I re­alise how much those years shaped not on­ly my sur­gi­cal skills but al­so my ap­proach to car­ing for women with can­cer.

But work­ing now in Trinidad al­ways makes me re­flect on just how dif­fer­ent health­care can look in parts of the world.

Oth­er dis­par­i­ties that I no­ticed over the years in­clude dif­fer­ences in health-seek­ing be­hav­iour.

Some Trinida­di­an women de­lay seek­ing med­ical at­ten­tion be­cause of work, car­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, or hop­ing symp­toms will set­tle.

This may re­sult in hav­ing more ad­vanced dis­ease at the time of di­ag­no­sis. In the UK, pub­lic health cam­paigns have in­creased aware­ness of “red flag” symp­toms, al­though de­lays still oc­cur there too.

How­ev­er, it will well known that par­tic­i­pa­tion in screen­ing pro­grammes tends to be high­er where or­gan­ised re­call sys­tems ex­ist.

The UK’s struc­tured in­vi­ta­tion sys­tems for cer­vi­cal screen­ing and breast screen­ing have helped nor­malise pre­ven­tive care.

Of course, no health­care sys­tem is per­fect.

The Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice in the UK faces enor­mous pres­sures, and any­one who works with­in it knows its chal­lenges. Yet one as­pect that con­tin­ues to im­press me is the em­pha­sis placed on time­ly can­cer care.

There are well-es­tab­lished fast-track re­fer­ral path­ways for women with sus­pect­ed can­cers, with clear­ly de­fined tar­gets from re­fer­ral to di­ag­no­sis and from di­ag­no­sis to treat­ment.

While de­lays cer­tain­ly oc­cur, the sys­tem is de­signed around the prin­ci­ple that when can­cer is sus­pect­ed, time mat­ters.

Can­cer does not wait. A few weeks can make the dif­fer­ence be­tween a dis­ease that is high­ly cur­able and one that re­quires much more ex­ten­sive treat­ment.

Long wait­ing times for in­ves­ti­ga­tions, spe­cial­ist ap­point­ments, surgery, or chemother­a­py cre­ate anx­i­ety for pa­tients and their fam­i­lies and can af­fect even­tu­al out­comes.

As doc­tors, we of­ten feel this frus­tra­tion along­side our pa­tients be­cause we know that ear­li­er di­ag­no­sis and faster treat­ment save lives.

Ul­ti­mat­ly, my vis­it re­mind­ed me that health­care is not about choos­ing one sys­tem over an­oth­er. Every coun­try has strengths worth cel­e­brat­ing and weak­ness­es that de­serve hon­est.

Some­times look­ing back re­minds us not on­ly of how far we have come per­son­al­ly but al­so of how far we can still go as a health­care sys­tem.

Nos­tal­gia is com­fort­ing, but it should al­so in­spire us to keep im­prov­ing—for our­selves, for our col­leagues, and most im­por­tant­ly, for the women who trust us with their care.