She started working at Yale’s hospital as a custodian. Now, she is a doctor

When her mother got sick, Shay Taylor-Allen decided to go to school to become the doctor ‘my mom needed at that time’

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Fresh out of high school, Shay Taylor-Allen started working at Yale New Haven Hospital as a custodian. After a decade of cleaning the hallways, she decided to go to school to become a doctor — and later walked those same hallways in her white coat.

For nearly 10 years, Taylor-Allen cleaned patient rooms and doctors’ offices. But when her mother, Shema, got sick, she decided to be the change within the system.

“Watching her struggle to be heard in the healthcare system opened my eyes to the reality of healthcare disparities. In that moment, I knew I wanted to become the doctor my mom needed at that time,” Taylor-Allen, now 32, wrote on a GoFundMe page, created to help with the expenses of her move back to New Haven.

While working full time, Taylor-Allen earned her undergraduate degree, then her master’s degree and was later accepted into medical school at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

She matched to residency at Yale’s Department of Anesthesiology in March, calling it a “ full circle moment I will never take for granted” on her GoFundMe page.

“A lot of people think that anesthesiologists don’t talk to their patients. They think we kind of just put them to sleep,” Taylor-Allen said in a profile written by the Yale School of Medicine in July.

“But I love to talk to my patients and make them feel comfortable. I can provide that comfort so they can feel ready for their surgeries, because it’s a scary thing to go through. I really want to be an advocate for my patients right before surgery.”

“I actually cleaned some of the anesthesiology offices back in the day. Sometimes, I see some people who didn’t know me at the time, but I knew them because I took out their trash,” Taylor-Allen said. The Independent has reached out to Taylor-Allen for comment about her first few months in her residency program.

Taylor-Allen now looks back at a pivotal moment on her journey, back when she was still a custodian. When her mother was sick, she decided to take matters into her own hands, emailing the hospital’s CEO on her behalf.

“‘I am the janitor that cleans your office. And this is what my mom is going through, and I don’t think it’s right. Is there any way that you can help us?’” Taylor-Allen recalled writing to the chief executive in an interview with InvestigateTV.