Dr Tuck Meng Soo has a life story like few other GPs.

Arriving in Canberra as a gay Chinese man in 1989, Dr Soo spent several years working at the Interchange General Practice before taking over from Dr Peter Rowland as practice principal after Dr Rowland was murdered in what many still suspect was a homophobic hate crime.

But it was last year, after what the GP describes as many years of private struggle, that she decided to transition from male to female.

She feared the reactions not least because it meant her patients would no longer be treated by a male doctor.