EDUCATION

With a multilingual background, Monica was educated in a French Lycée then sent to Boarding School at Roedean in Brighton. Initially interested in pursuing a career in art, a family member’s illness led her to follow her parents’ footsteps into Medicine, qualifying as a doctor from Bristol Medical School in 2002.

She taught Anatomy at the University of Oxford and Guys Hospital in London, and trained in Orthopaedic Surgery, General Surgery, Intensive Care and Plastic Surgery before becoming a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 2006.

She then undertook further specialist training in Plastic Surgery in various centres in the East of England, cementing this training with a year-long fellowship in Craniofacial Surgery in Paris, followed by a second fellowship in Microsurgery in Cambridge. She furthered her experience with visits to various centres in Europe and the USA, both before and after completing her formal training in 2015, when she joined the GMC Specialist Register in Plastic Surgery.

NHS APPOINTMENT

She was appointed as a Consultant Plastic Surgeon with a subspecialty interest in Head and Neck reconstruction and Facial Palsy reanimation at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital in 2016- one of the largest volume Head and Neck Reconstructive Units in the UK. Once there, she established the Facial Palsy Multidisciplinary patient pathway and set up combined multidisciplinary facial palsy clinics to improve her patients’ experience.

OTHER ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

She was elected by her fellow plastic surgeons to represent the East of England as Council Member on the Board of the Association of British Reconstructive and Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAPRAS), a role she will hold until 2021.

She was soon afterwards appointed as the governance lead for the Surgical Division in her NHS Trust with responsibility for ensuring patient safety- a role she held for two years.

She has been appointed as the deputy training program director for the East of England Plastic Surgery Training Program after leading their surgical simulation program for four years.

She is passionate about extending these training opportunities to surgeons in less fortunate areas of the world, and was an elected committee member of the BFIRST charity until 2020, where she worked towards creating an open access educational website for surgeons in low and middle income countries with poor access to educational resources.

She is a member of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons (BAPRAS), the British Association of Aesthetic Surgeons (BAAPS), and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), and has private practices in London and Essex.