Suffolk care chief Prema Dorai reflects on 50-year career

Prema Dorai is the director of Primary Homecare, an Outstanding-rated domiciliary care service.

She is also a member of Suffolk's Integrated Care System (ICS), a trustee for several charities and has run successful programs to free up beds in Suffolk hospitals.  

Ms Dorai is a qualified lecturer and has delivered training for nurses – all while working full-time and raising a young family. 

But when she arrived in the UK from Malaysia in 1969, Ms Dorai said she was a quiet, shy teenager.

Prema Dorai arrived in the UK with her sister in 1969 to train as a nurse. (Image: Newsquest)

Ms Dorai and her sister began training as nurses at Lewisham Hospital, and she qualified in 1971.

Just three years later, she was promoted to a ward sister. 

It was rare for someone of an ethnic minority to be promoted to such a senior role in those days.

However, she does not remember encountering many overt displays of racism. 

“There was the occasional thing, of course, but in the days when we trained, it was all quite happy,” Ms Dorai remembered. 

“There was a focus on recruiting people from the Commonwealth, so there was community of us. 

“But the senior jobs were usually reserved for English people.” 

By this time, Ms Dorai had worked in children’s wards at Lewisham and Guy’s hospitals. In 1976, she accepted a senior sister post at the Brook Hospital, where she ran the children’s surgical ward.

Here, she saw first-hand how new ideas could revolutionise healthcare. 

“I have always been interested in innovation,” said Ms Dorai. “We had a nursing officer who had been to America, and was interested in the psychology of preparing children for their procedures. 

“She brought her ideas back and needed us to implement them.” 

The hospital was among the first in the country to have nurses wearing brightly coloured uniforms, and using dolls to help children understand their surgeries. This had a remarkable effect on reducing the young patients’ distress. 

Ms Dorai got married in 1979 and gave birth to the first of her three sons the following year. 

However, she was growing frustrated at the limitations of the National Health Service. 

“The NHS is so steeped in bureaucracy, it inhibits any innovative thought,” she explained. “We felt that the NHS was not really offering the public what it should, and we felt that perhaps we could do things a little better.” 

A friend suggested that they consider buying a nursing home, and so they began searching the search.  

The Old Rectory in Barham stood out to them, and so, in 1986, the family journeyed to Suffolk. 

Here, Ms Dorai was able to put her ideas into practice. The home expanded to 95 beds and created Suffolk’s first ‘dementia village’ with mock shops, such as butcheries and bakeries. 

The staff found that agitated patients were greatly soothed by being able to walk around these shops, and had a much better quality of life. 

Prema Dorai said she has always been interested in innovative ways to improve health and social care. (Image: Newsquest)

In 2012, Ms Dorai entered into Suffolk’s first ‘winter bed programme’ with Ipswich Hospital, taking patients who no longer needed treatment, but were not yet able to go home, and making beds available during the critical winter months. 

The scheme was so successful that it was replicated for another five years, and became referred to by hospitals as “the Baylham model”. 

As chairwoman of the Suffolk Association of Independent Care Providers and a member of the ICS, Ms Dorai has become an outspoken advocate for the social care sector.

“We need to make our voices heard, because we provide a very large percentage of care in the community,” she said.   

After more than 50 years of hard work, Ms Dorai is proud of her contribution to the UK’s healthcare system. 

“Sometimes I can’t believe the things that have been achieved, the connections I have made,” she said.