06:00 Monday 15 April 2013Neuro specialist picks up top accoladeWritten byRACHEL ALLENDr Helen Fernandes from Addenbrooke's. Picture by Keith Jones3 ImagesA neurosurgeon has been honoured with an international award for her extensive work in the field.Helen Fernandes, consultant neurosurgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, has attracted the Greg Wilkins-Barrick Chair visiting international surgeon award, which was created by Women in Neurosurgery (WINS) to encourage education and collaboration in the field.She has been working with the University of Exeter to look at the barriers to female medical graduates pursuing surgery as a career. She will do a brief presentation about this research at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons meeting in New Orleans later this month.Miss Fernandes said: “I attended the WINS conference at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore last year and it was an amazing experience. Sixty per cent of our medical graduates are women but proportionately few of these go into surgery - this means we may be missing a lot of talented individuals. Our research is investigating the reasons for this and looking at interventions to support female graduates.”Until recently, Helen chaired the UK branch of Women in Surgery, which is part of the Royal College of Surgeons, and in 2011 she was one of four Addenbrooke’s experts named in The Times directory of top surgeons.
