Dr Clara Tuck Meng Soo on ‘specialist’ general practice, retirement and coming out to her elderly patients as trans
Dr Soo describes HIV medicine in the 1990s as a moral imperative: 'You would see gaunt-looking people and know they would be dead soon.'
Born in Malaysia, schooled in England, retiring in Canberra, Dr Clara Tuck Meng Soo has walked a path different to most GPs, even outside of coming out as transgender to elderly, conservative patients.
Yet she initially resisted her pull towards medicine because it felt too obliging to the expectations of her mother, who she describes as a “tiger mum +1”.
“At the same time, I said to myself that not doing it because it was what my mother wanted was also, in a way, being influenced by her rather than making my own choice,” she tells AusDoc.
“Still, it probably wasn’t until I’d actually been a GP for several years that I thought I was in the right profession.”
