A Profile of Justine Hextall

“CHOOSE what you want to do”, Justine Hextall tells her children, “and be the very best you can be”. And who would doubt it? Anyone who has had the joy of being in the Tarrant Street Clinic, hearing Justine’s quick steps in her madly elegant shoes, her bright intelligent words as she encourages patients and colleagues, will know that nothing but the best would ever be good enough for her.

Her mother was a nurse and as a little girl Justine would wheedle her way into her room to look at her medical books. She found them thrilling.

Her mother was a nurse and as a little girl Justine would wheedle her way into her room to look at her medical books. She found them thrilling. The journey of disease, its course and final healing was to the little girl profoundly exciting. When the family’s pet rabbits died Justine asked whether she could look at them, dissect their bodies, to find the cause of their demise. A suggestion her parents turned down!

While never denying the love of medicine, Justine’s parents knew the importance of a broad education and very early in the lives of her and her three siblings they introduced them to the joys of music. Her mother knew someone who had worked with Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan-Williams; now in retirement this lady was asked whether she would be willing to teach piano to the children. This apparently redoubtable person came round, listened to the children’s playing, tapping firmly on the piano while exhorting them to attend to their musical phrasing – and took on the commission. They all passed Grade 8 while still in their teens and Justine also played the flute and sang. One of her sisters is now Head of Music in the Junior School at Brighton College and Justine still values the discipline that the study of music taught her.

And more than that, she recognises that we all have an innate recognition of music, that it elevates our soul and demonstrates that there is something greater than ourselves alive in the world. She believes passionately in the value of music and the vital necessity of its teaching, Music unlocks our potential and reminds us of special events so that these remain lively in our imagination. Indeed the playing of music to those in intensive care wards has been shown to hasten the healing process and it is balm to those suffering from stress.

And so this young woman with her recognition of all aspects of the human being studied medicine at King’s College, London and chose to specialise in cardiology; the heart, after all, being the centre of the body. She learnt about the attributes of the heart and delighted in the patterns shown up by electro-cardiogram. When working in Accident and Emergency as part of her basic training she would be called in to see a patient and knew immediately whether the person was ill. Where colleagues had been unsure, she would wonder why they had not called her earlier.

When she was working for her Membership of the Royal College of Physicians she felt that same visceral joy she had felt as a child and, rather as one regrets the ending of a good novel, she longed for the textbooks to start all over again.

It was while she was rising through the ranks of the Cardiology Department at West Middlesex University Hospital that she met Sebastian. He was her junior but, although they had both heard about each other, they had not met before he joined her team. He would join her coronary care ward rounds even when this was not strictly necessary – and she told her sister that she had met the man she was going to marry. When these two rising stars married eighteen months later, they knew they wanted children and they also knew that family life would be impossible if both parents continued in such a demanding medical discipline.

And so it was that Justine decided to study dermatology.

With her boss’s words, “You are the least likely dermatologist I’ve ever met” ringing in her ears, she remained sure where her priority lay and applied for a post at the St. John’s Institute of Dermatology at St. Thomas’s Hospital. She did, though, recognise what lay beneath his words. She was a dynamic member of his team with a glittering cardiological career ahead of her and when she went for interview at St. John’s was amazed and mollified to discover that her fellow applicants had written papers on the subject, that it was as serious as any medical discipline. Having no learned dermatological papers to her name, her interviewers asked her why she thought they should accept her. “Because I am an excellent doctor and I will do well for you”, was her reply – and she was accepted.

By then Justine and Sebastian’s first child had been born. Grace would spend her days in the nursery at St. Thomas’s, joining her mother on evening ward rounds before catching the bus home to Battersea. A happy, if exhausting, way of life that changed again when Sebastian suggested they move to the south coast. They had a boat at Emsworth and he felt the family would benefit from living out of Town. St. Thomas’s, however, were horrified that she was leaving her prestigious London post and, unwilling to let her go quietly, they appointed her Honorary Consultant.

And so Justine came south. Her ambition had long been to hold an appointment in hospital, to teach and to conduct research and all of these she has achieved.