Meet a Doctor With Tattoos Who’s Gonna Tear Down All the Double Standards That Exist in Our Heads

Sarah Gray, a clinician, is also the “world’s most tattooed doctor” and living proof that you can’t judge a book by its cover and that creative self-expression doesn’t mean you can’t be a good doctor. Moreover, her unusual appearance sometimes even helps her when she’s working with patients.

Here at Bright Side, we were so inspired by this woman and her combined love for body art and medicine that we couldn’t help but share it with you.

Dr. Sarah defines herself as the most colorful doctor working at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. And she’s on her way to becoming an orthopedic surgeon. As a former Inked Magazine Australia/New Zealand cover model and Miss Inked Australia, Sarah became popular years ago and now has thousands of followers on social media.

While Sarah was modeling, she was also a student in the medical school at the University of Adelaide, from which she graduated in 2017. She actually became interested in medicine as a child because her father was a doctor and the biggest role model for her.

Dr. Gray shares that she got her first tattoo when she was only 16, and now she’s almost covered from head to toe, except for her face. Sarah confesses she was never going to get that many tattoos. Originally, it was an ink piece that signified an important period of her life and was from a specific artist. But then she got carried away with the idea of expressing herself creatively through body art.

Commenting on how her unusual appearance affects her work, Sarah answers that it sometimes might actually be a good talking point, especially for the younger generation — it occasionally breaks the ice.

Corporate policy in the medical field prohibits offensive tattoos — but Sarah doesn’t have any of those. Perhaps the rules would be different at private medical centers, but Dr. Gray has visible ink pieces on her hands, knuckles, and neck, and it’s not an obstacle when working for a public hospital.

Regarding relationships with colleagues, Dr. Gray admits that she has never felt discriminated against since, in medicine, the most important thing is how good you are as a specialist. Moreover, she is training to be a surgeon, more specifically, an orthopedic surgeon.

Though Dr. Gray was never cruelly bullied, she shared her worst experience with discrimination so far — Sarah and her husband were planning to have lunch, but were asked to leave the venue because of their “no visible tattoo policy” and that happened in several places on the same day. The young doctor finds it surprising that in the modern world, people are still judged by their appearance.

Sarah Gray is one of the most striking models in the Australian tattoo community and an encouraging living example of the fact that a body, almost entirely covered with tattoos, is not an obstacle on the way to becoming a great surgeon.

You don’t have to give up your creative self-expression for a serious job, even if no one has done it before! Have you heard similar inspirational stories? Do you have any colleagues with outstanding appearances?