WHEN Blackburn oral surgeon Maire Morton went to medical school she was one of only a handful of women in her class.

Three decades later and she has risen to the top of her specialism - being appointed as the first-ever woman president of the British Association of Oral and Maxillo-Facial Surgeons.

"I was very lucky and I'm really pleased," beamed Miss Morton, quite rightly proud of her success.

"I'm the first woman president, which will be a great honour. But it's going to be hard work as well.

"I'll still be keeping my role here in East Lancashire but I'll have to cope with the extra workload for my year in office, which starts in 2010."

Miss Morton is a consultant maxillo-facial surgeon based at Blackburn Royal Hospital.

Her job means she does everything from removing impacted wisdom teeth to reconstructing the jaw of someone who has cancer of the head and neck.

As a female surgeon she is used to working mostly with male colleagues.

"I'm used to working in a predominantly male workforce. It's how it's always been since I began training," she said. "I don't even think about it really. It's just how it is.

"But the Royal College of Surgeons had a drive a few years ago to try to increase the numbers of women in all branches of surgery and slowly they're coming through the ranks.

"I'm happy to say that in some medical schools it's now 50/50."

Miss Morton has worked hard to achieve her success. As a self-confessed workaholic she often arrives at her office for 8am and doesn't leave until 12 hours later.

But she is a busy woman, with a number of "hats" to wear.

As well as her role as consultant surgeon, she is clinical head of division for surgery for East Lancashire Hospitals - which means she has a major influence on the way surgical services in East Lancashire are developed.

And she is also a member of the North West cleft lip and palate team which provides plastic surgery, speech therapy and orthodontics to youngsters born with the malformation.

Miss Morton started her career in dentistry and then trained as a surgeon in London, where she was born and bred.

She moved to the North West to train as a senior registrar and came to East Lancashire Hospitals in 1987.

It's common for careers in medicine to run in the family but Miss Morton was the first of her family to enter the field.

"I wasn't somebody who had a passion to go into medicine. I drifted into it," she admitted.

"But that developed and I definitely have a passion for the job now."

At 57 and with no children, Miss Morton agrees she's had to make sacrifices in her personal life.

"Women of my age who pushed on with their careers probably did have to make sacrifices in things like having children," she said.

"Thankfully girls nowadays don't have to because we have better maternity and discrimination laws.

"I don't think potential employers nowadays wouldn't give a young woman a job because there was a chance she'd get pregnant, but I'm sure when I started out some of that was going on."

But although there have been sacrifices, there have been major highs.

"You see elderly people with no teeth who haven't been able to eat properly for years. With a fairly simple operation you can pin dentures into their jaws.

"And when someone tells me they've been able to eat a sandwich for the first time in 20 years thanks to my surgery, it gives me a real buzz."

Miss Morton said advances in medicine had been so astounding that the profession she started in was barely recognisable.

"When I started out we did one in two weekends on call, which I think is illegal now," she said.

"I think the working life of general doctors has improved beyond all recognition. Medicine has changed. It's become very intense.

"I didn't seem quite as busy in some respects but, as everything has tightened down, there are lots more deadlines and work is physically harder.

"Medicine is developing so fast and advancing so quickly. We know so much we didn't know five years ago."