Oscar Lyons: My story as told to Elisabeth Easther

Rhodes scholar Oscar Lyons believes early traumatic experiences helped him become the man he is. Photo / Amadea Tu

Dr Oscar Lyons is a leadership development researcher, educator and doctor and is currently a teaching fellow in Global Healthcare Leadership at the University of Oxford, where he completed his DPhil. The recipient of numerous awards - including a Rhodes Scholarship - Lyons was recently awarded the inaugural Sir George Elliot Fellowship for forging an extraordinary career in medical leadership.

I was born on a farm north of Auckland, the second of four boys, and we moved to Dunedin when I was quite young. I'm told I was a very serious child, quite quiet, though I smiled often too. Growing up, I went to a lot of schools because the houses we rented kept being sold, and every time we moved house we moved schools. Possibly because of that, I was not very confident socially.

I'm conscious this is not just my story but when I was 10 we escaped family violence by flying to Auckland with the help of Women's Refuge and the police. At the airport, we didn't even have shoes, and mum's friends gave us their adult-sized shoes so we could get on the plane. My mum and my brothers and I arrived in Auckland with just a black plastic sack full of clothes. We were 13, 10, 8 and 2 and in many ways that experience formed the foundation of who I've become.

When we arrived we had close to nothing, and our new community poured so much love and effort into supporting us. It was scary too, but we had friends and aunts and cousins who helped us settle in. It taught me about the importance of community.

Our aunt welcomed us into her house, and helped us find a place to live. Someone gave us a guitar, and I taught myself how to play. Music is important to my family and has been a lovely focus and escape ever since.

Money was always tight. I remember once one of my brothers and I were goofing around in the garden and broke one of the windows. Mum cried because she knew having to repair the window meant we wouldn't have money for food that week. We learnt early on to be careful, to think about consequences.

Mum is incredibly strong and I have enormous respect for her. She gave us every opportunity even if it meant considerable hardship for her. Mum absolutely invested her life into me and my brothers. She taught us to overcome challenges and how to believe in ourselves.

I always loved reading and learning, that was my safe space, but I didn't particularly like school and found every opportunity not to go. Then one day at Rosmini College – my high school - I heard a speaker talk about how they wished they could go back and put more effort into school, because they'd missed opportunities. I decided then to push through and just go to school, no matter what, because I didn't want to live with that sort of regret.

There had never been any doctors in our family but, in my final year, my chemistry teacher expressed surprise that I wasn't thinking about studying medicine. Once I gave it some thought, I realised medicine was a career with good job security and that it offered an opportunity to do something worthwhile, so I applied.

At the end of high school, the Sir George Elliot Trust awarded me a scholarship that recognises students who've achieved in the face of significant challenges. Heading into six years of Auckland Medical School, I was hugely grateful for their support.

It wasn't just financial support either, it also helped give me confidence and space beyond part-time work to do things like judo, which has been a passion ever since my high school English teacher Ray Roberts, a judo fanatic, introduced me to the sport. Judo is mentally and physically challenging. I lost a lot of judo matches in my short career, and I won a few too.

The first time I applied for the Rhodes Scholarship in 2014 I was promptly rejected, but my experiences of both winning and losing in sports, and scholarships, made it easier to regroup, not to take it personally, and to reapply the next year.

I've always thought of myself as a small-town person, which is why I went to Gisborne after medical school. Gisborne has a high Māori population, about 50 per cent, and yet hospital patients are closer to 70 per cent Māori. I felt very strongly about wanting to make a small difference somewhere like that. Being able to make a positive impact really matters to me, because of the challenges I'd experienced. Gisborne also has a phenomenal judo club, which was another attraction.

With Gisborne being a small town, we'd sometimes meet patients outside the hospital context. I remember performing at a blues night there when someone asked, "are you Dr Lyons?" Which is always slightly terrifying. I couldn't place them until they told me how I'd chatted to them in the hospital and helped them feel comfortable that they were being taken care of. That might seem small, but those interactions can make an important difference. Really listening is also vital.

I remember feeling horrible after one of my patients died in hospital. Because we weren't certain what they had actually died of, from a medical point of view, we'd have been interested in performing an autopsy, but the family said they didn't need one. They said, "it doesn't matter to us what they died of, it matters how they died and that they were cared for". I'll always remember that.

If I return to clinical work, I'm likely to go into general practice because GPs have perhaps the closest connection to their communities. It's broad and personal, and you can be very impactful by building connections with people over time.

The college I'm at Oxford was founded in 1263 and since I've been there, I've been intellectually and philosophically challenged. My horizons have broadened, as has my understanding of the world. There are lots of very ambitious and passionate people from vastly different experiences and it is a great environment to strive towards major goals.

I tend to perform really well under stress and that can be a trap because it's very easy for me to end up on the edge of burnout. But I've learnt to be open about when I'm struggling because it's important to role model honesty around being vulnerable. It's easy to pretend we're coping, but that can prevent people from connecting. But being open about struggle can help others understand they are not alone.

Three organisations in particular have made a huge impact on me. Women's Refuge helped my family get out of the situation we were in and restart in Auckland. The Rotary Youth Leadership Awards helped me believe in myself and to expand what I thought was possible and The Sir George Elliot scholarship did a huge amount to build my confidence.

Because I've not had a standard medical career, I sometimes question if moving to Oxford was a good decision. I've asked myself, 'am I in the right place?', which is why I'm so grateful to receive the Sir George Elliot Fellowship, and to have been thought worthy of it, as I will return to Oxford with a renewed conviction that I am working on the right things.