Shabnam Gujadhur, Medical Doctor at Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service, Lecturer at Griffith University, shared on LinkedIn:
“Today I had the privilege of speaking at HER Mind, HER Health conference on a topic that sits very close to both my personal and professional life:
‘Lived Experience as Authority: Redefining Women’s Mental Health in Survivorship.’
Four years ago, I entered the healthcare system in a very different role- not as a doctor, but as a 30-year-old woman diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Since then, navigating cancer survivorship, fertility challenges and healthcare from both sides has fundamentally changed the way I think about what it means to care for someone.
Today, I spoke about the parts of survivorship that aren’t always captured by our traditional measures of success.
‘A clear scan can tell us about disease. Yet, it cannot always tell us how someone is living after it.’
While healthcare is increasingly making space for lived experience, being heard is not the same as having influence.
For me, meaningful change means shifting:
- From storytelling → to co-design.
- From presence → to participation.
- From voice → to authority.
Lived experience shouldn’t replace clinical expertise or research evidence. However it is another form of knowledge – one that can help us understand what illness means inside a human life.
Additionally, if we genuinely want to design better healthcare for women, their experiences need to shape the questions we ask, the research we conduct, the services we design and the decisions we make.
I’m leaving today incredibly grateful for the conversations and questions that followed my presentation – but also feeling more energised than ever about the role I hope to play in women’s health, survivorship, advocacy and systems change.
If healthcare is designed for women, women should have the power to help shape it.”
Other articles about Shabnam Gujadhur on OncoDaily.
