The winner of Bermuda’s Best Healthcare Professional award said he was told as a child he did not have what it took to be a doctor.

Kyjuan Brown added: “During my educational pursuits, especially in primary and high school, I was always told that I was best suited to be a blue-collar worker.

“These guys do very important work, but I’ve wanted to become a doctor since the age of 5.”

He said: “I wasn’t the brightest spark in my class. I had a learning impediment and it took me a lot longer to retain the information.

“When I got to college, I realised that I had to find ways of overcoming my challenges, so when I recognised that I had an impediment, I developed a solution to fix it.

“Once I adapted, my whole life changed around my academic pursuits — I went from being a C average to graduating magnum cum laude with a 3.6 GPA.”

Dr Brown, the medical director of Northshore Medical & Aesthetics Centre, was given the title after a public vote for the annual Best of Bermuda Awards.

The June edition of The Bermudian magazine, which organises the awards, said Dr Brown understood “the importance of mental and physical wellbeing in harmony”.

Dr Brown, from Pembroke, said that mental and physical health were closely linked and the most effective treatments tackled both.

He said: “Their trauma, the effects of that, social issues, all of that has a part to play in regards to how they perceive illness and how they’re going to manage their illness.

“As clinicians and scientists, we have to help patients bridge the gap so that they can understand the link between their behaviour and the disease.”

Dr Brown said the problems he faced as a youngster had helped develop the approach he had to medicine.

He explained that creative thinking was vital for science and medicine to help develop a better understanding of people’s health problems.

Dr Brown added: “We’ve come to learn that patients’ trauma has an adverse effect on their physical health and this is why I’ve created this centre, to focus on the whole person and not just their illness.”