Why Did I Become A Doctor South Africa

This episode is brought to you in partnership with MedicalBrief. Stay informed with trusted reporting, expert insights, and analysis that matters to healthcare professionals. From breaking news to in-depth features, MedicalBrief keeps you up to date with everything happening in healthcare. Subscribe free at https://bit.ly/3Pei7o1.

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Dr Nikita Sahadew got into medical school and turned it down. On the advice of her small-town GP in Verulam, she chose podiatry instead, a profession she says has only around 400 registered practitioners in South Africa, trained at the only university on the continent that offers the degree.

In this episode, she tells Yash and Yak how a teacher's daughter from Mountview Secondary ended up qualifying as one of only two podiatrists in her year, why her very first patient at Joburg Gen involved maggots, and how she built her practice, PodMed South Africa, from one patient in her first month. She talks about completing her PhD in diabetes while running a practice and raising two small children, her role as a podiatry representative on the HPCSA's Professional Board for Physiotherapy, Podiatry and Biokinetics*, and why she believes foot care is life-saving for diabetic patients.

Recorded before her PhD was finalised, this episode releases with Dr Sahadew newly entitled to the title. Congratulations, Doc.

Find her at PodMed South Africa on Instagram and TikTok.

*Note: At the time of recording, Dr Nikita Sahadew was the sole podiatry representative on the relevant HPCSA Professional Board. Since 1 August 2026, podiatry representation on the Board has expanded, and Dr Sahadew continues to serve as a podiatry representative.

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This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed by guests do not necessarily represent those of the podcast or hosts and do not constitute professional advice. Always consult with qualified professionals for medical, financial, or career decisions.
🎙️ Why Did I Become A Doctor shares honest, unscripted conversations with doctors, dentists, healthcare professionals, and other inspiring individuals who are shaping the future of healthcare and beyond.
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Nadia Shiba and Kamini Shanmugam join Why Did I Become a Doctor South Africa for a conversation sixteen years in the making: two best friends who became business partners.

Both raised in Lenasia, both lawyers by training, they each describe how they "ended up in insurance" almost by accident, fell for one of its most specialised corners, and eventually left the security of corporate to build their own claims-outsourcing business together. Today they handle specialist liability claims, from medical malpractice and professional indemnity to cyber and financial lines, and they make the case that good claims handling is far more human than most people assume. As they put it, the job was never about looking for reasons to reject a claim. It is about fairness, judgement, and meeting people on their worst day.

Along the way they reflect on growing up in a close-knit community, the friendship that has carried them from one workplace to the next, the leap into entrepreneurship, dealing with online critics, and why they started their own podcast to help close the skills gap in their industry. It is a warm, candid conversation about loyalty, reinvention, and finding meaning in a profession most people overlook.

#WhyDidIBecomeADoctor #WDIBAD #CareerJourney #Insurance #Entrepreneurship #Friendship #Lenasia

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed by guests do not necessarily represent those of the podcast or hosts and do not constitute professional advice. Always consult with qualified professionals for medical, financial, or career decisions.
🎙️ Why Did I Become A Doctor shares honest, unscripted conversations with doctors, dentists, healthcare professionals, and other inspiring individuals who are shaping the future of healthcare and beyond.
💬 Enjoyed the episode?
Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it really helps us grow and inspire the next generation.
🔗 Connect with us:
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🚀 Want to collaborate, support the show, or find out more?
Visit whydidibecomeadoctor.com or email us at info@whydidibecomeadoctor.com.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with MedicalBrief. Stay informed with trusted reporting, expert insights, and analysis that matters to healthcare professionals. From breaking news to in-depth features, MedicalBrief keeps you up to date with everything happening in healthcare. Subscribe free at https://bit.ly/3Pei7o1.

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She could have studied dentistry. She chose instead to become the person who helps make sure you never need one.

Kaokie Sepuru, full name Mmakaoka Sepuru, is an oral hygienist who has been involved in the leadership of the Oral Hygiene Association of South Africa (OHASA) since her first year in the profession. In this conversation she makes a quietly powerful case for oral hygiene as a calling in its own right.

Kaokie grew up in Soweto, raised by a single mother, Iris, a teacher who later became a principal, always wanted more for her only child, and moved the family out to Northcliff. According to Kaokie, an aptitude test once told her she should be an accountant, but she knew she needed people and movement rather than a desk and numbers. She found oral hygiene almost by chance at a University of Pretoria open day, and she has not looked back since.

In conversation with Yash and Yak, she traces the path from shadowing an orthodontist, to a mobile dental truck serving communities across the country, to the Waterfall practice where she has worked for eleven years alongside specialist prosthodontist Dr Ashana Harryparsad. She explains why she calls herself a "floss fairy", why she believes prevention should come first, and how she has taught patients who cannot afford floss to improvise with what they have.

She is just as open about the parts of the job that rarely get spoken about: the patient who wept in her chair and called it a "safe space", the frightened children she has coaxed into trusting her, and why she measures her own success by how many people choose to come back. Her view is a simple one, that you do not have to be a doctor to heal people.

Beyond the chair, Kaokie's work with OHASA and with ITOP has taken her to Dubai, Nigeria and Egypt as a speaker and instructor, mentored along the way by Stella Lamprecht and Angelique Kearney. She speaks candidly about turning down work abroad, the ongoing and affectionate argument with her mother who still wishes she had become a dentist, and why she has chosen to build her life in South Africa.

Follow Kaokie on Instagram: @kaokie_xing

Subscribe for new conversations every fortnight.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed by guests do not necessarily represent those of the podcast or hosts and do not constitute professional advice. Always consult with qualified professionals for medical, financial, or career decisions.
🎙️ Why Did I Become A Doctor shares honest, unscripted conversations with doctors, dentists, healthcare professionals, and other inspiring individuals who are shaping the future of healthcare and beyond.
💬 Enjoyed the episode?
Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it really helps us grow and inspire the next generation.
🔗 Connect with us:
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🚀 Want to collaborate, support the show, or find out more?
Visit whydidibecomeadoctor.com or email us at info@whydidibecomeadoctor.com.

He walked into medical school. Two weeks later, he walked out. What followed was a career that would shape South African law for decades — from drafting the Competition Act to chairing the Davis Tax Committee, from a TV show he did entirely for free to a bench appointment he didn't even want.

Judge Dennis Davis grew up in a working-class Jewish family in Cape Town — his father a motor mechanic, his mother a legal secretary. He was a first-generation university student who finished second in his law class, got no bursaries because he was too outspoken, and spent nearly two years at Old Mutual doing estate planning for wealthy clients just to save enough money to study overseas. None of it was planned. Almost all of it was accidental.

In this episode, Judge Davis speaks candidly about what it actually felt like to sit on the bench for over two decades — the exhaustion, the under-resourcing, the weight of custody cases, and the salary that senior counsel earn five to ten times over. He talks about being "bulldozed" onto the bench by Chief Justice Ismail Mahomed, applying once for the Constitutional Court and not getting it, and why he jokes that the interviews were simply too long. He reflects on growing up under apartheid, the parallel he drew as a 12-year-old between the Holocaust and what he witnessed on the streets of Cape Town, and how that moment set the course of everything that followed.

He also shares why, in 2026, he is no longer certain that constitutional democracy in South Africa is here to stay — and why he still wouldn't leave.

Hosted by Dr Yash Naidoo and Dr Yakshen Lindy.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed by guests do not necessarily represent those of the podcast or hosts and do not constitute professional advice. Always consult with qualified professionals for medical, legal, financial, or career decisions.
🎙️ Why Did I Become A Doctor shares honest, unscripted conversations with doctors, dentists, healthcare professionals, and other inspiring individuals who are shaping the future of healthcare and beyond.
💬 Enjoyed the episode?
Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it really helps us grow and inspire the next generation.
🔗 Connect with us:
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Twitter (X)
• LinkedIn
• WhatsApp Channel
🚀 Want to collaborate, support the show, or find out more?
Visit whydidibecomeadoctor.com or email us at info@whydidibecomeadoctor.com.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with MedicalBrief. Stay informed with trusted reporting, expert insights, and analysis that matters to healthcare professionals. From breaking news to in-depth features, MedicalBrief keeps you up to date with everything happening in healthcare. Subscribe free at https://bit.ly/3Pei7o1.

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Dr André Hugo has been practising as a specialist orthodontist for 42 years. He grew up in Krugersdorp as the son of a dentist — and very nearly became a plastic surgeon, until he watched his uncle operate and fainted. He is also a pilot — he learnt to fly gliders as a dental student at Wits, went on to hold an instrument rating for 25 years, owned several aircraft including a Cessna Centurion, and for years flew his family across borders to Lake Kariba and Bazaruto Island. He is also the man whose practice's transformation from analogue to digital became a teaching case at the UCT Business School.

At 74, he is still practising, still fascinated by new technology, and firmly of the view that retirement is a dirty word — though a stent and a brutal course of statins last year have complicated that position somewhat.

In this conversation, Yash and Yak speak with someone who has watched orthodontics evolve from hand-bent wires and plaster casts to AI-driven treatment planning and direct resin printing — and who has strong, considered views on all of it.

Topics covered: growing up in Krugersdorp as the son of a dentist; a plastic surgeon uncle who inspired him until he fainted; why his father steered him away from prosthodontics; gliding at Magaliesburg, an instrument rating, and international clearances; the stent, the statins, and rethinking invincibility; delegation as the key to scaling a practice; how his nephew Chris Kerr-Peterson dragged him from analogue to digital; a practice transformation that became a UCT Business School teaching case; online booking and the evolution of informed consent; aligners vs braces and the limitations nobody advertises; direct resin printing; AI in orthodontics; why he never considered emigrating; the Kruger elephant problem; and succession planning, retirement, and barefoot walks on the beach.

Co-hosted by Dr Yakshen Lindy | Recorded 23 May 2026

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed by guests do not necessarily represent those of the podcast or hosts and do not constitute professional advice. Always consult with qualified professionals for medical, financial, or career decisions.
🎙️ Why Did I Become A Doctor shares honest, unscripted conversations with doctors, dentists, healthcare professionals, and other inspiring individuals who are shaping the future of healthcare and beyond.
💬 Enjoyed the episode?
Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it really helps us grow and inspire the next generation.
🔗 Connect with us:
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Twitter (X)
• LinkedIn
• WhatsApp Channel
🚀 Want to collaborate, support the show, or find out more?
Visit whydidibecomeadoctor.com or email us at info@whydidibecomeadoctor.com.