I’m going to drop a little bombshell and tell you all that I have submitted my pension paperwork and plan to retire in September.. And hopefully move to France
“Why?” I hear you ask….
Well, “because I can” is the honest answer. And my kids are all grown up- being now 30, 28 and 26 now
I think I have given a lot over the years and don’t think I have the vigour of a younger doctor anymore.
The new doctors we have are all tremendous as well as all the various other clinical staff and management so I am confident that Leatside is in very good shape and in safe hands for the future.
When I came back to Totnes it was with the aim of bringing up my kids in this lovely part of the world and to be a GP for the people of Totnes… So I haven’t gone off filling other roles in the health authority or university or anything… Just been a GP.
And I think overall I’ve been a pretty good one.
My latest joke if anyone tries to butter me up by saying that is to reply “Well, I can’t be that good- all my patients die”, which holds a good nugget of truth.
My role I have always seen as being a health adviser to the patients… They ask my opinion, and I offer some advice.. Hopefully based on good evidence or experience and sharing the thought processes with the patients…
My role has never been an enforcer and I have always strongly supported people’s right to autonomy about their own health decisions
In Fact, I have always rather liked this poem by WH Auden:
Give me a doctor partridge-plump,
Short in the leg and broad in the rump,
An endomorph with gentle hands
Who’ll never make absurd demands
That I abandon all my vices
Nor pull a long face in a crisis,
But with a twinkle in his eye
Will tell me that I have to die.
An endomorph who’s broad in the rump? … well, yes… could be me…
So how did I get to this point?
I was born in Broomborough Hospital, Totnes in Jan 1968
I went through various primary schools- Grove, Harbertonford and Dartington (also one in Buckinghamshire for a spell when my elder brother Sam was diagnosed with Leukaemia) ; then on to Kevics (I may have taken my eye off the ball in 6th form so had to spend an extra year there) and then off to Leicester medical school in Sept 1987
(1987 Michael Jackson released the “Bad” album, Fatal Attraction was in Cinemas
TOTP: https://youtu.be/qdCxY-prbww?si=BSn928toz_ND20Ma )
Me enrolling to University in 1987
From August to December 1988 I spent a semester at the University of the Saarland in Germany studying anatomy and Physiology under Prof Ernst Kienecker and then returned in 1991 to do a further spell at the same hospital doing Neurosurgery and Neurology, with the surgeon who had invented the Lumbar disc microdiscectomy, Dr Wolfhard Caspar. I would be his assistant in theatre most days with slipped discs in the lumbar spine and neck as well as helping with more complex spinal reconstructions as well as “normal” brain surgery.
I married my wife Deborah in 1990. She has been my constant support since then. We’ll have been married 34 years this August and I would not have been able to do my job at all without her constant presence and support in that time, and being always there for our kids as well.
And if she weren’t such a superb cook I suspect I’d be only half the man I am now!
I passed my Medical School “finals” winning the prize in anatomy and started work as a Junior Doctor in August 1992
(August 1992 – Barcelona Olympics held; Miley Cyrus’s dad had Achy Breaky Heart in the charts! https://youtu.be/H34QdGDcds4?t=23 )
As a House Officer I worked in Urology, General Surgery, Gastroenterology and Haematology
I became a senior house officer in 1993 and worked in Leicester General Hospital doing Cardiology/General Medicine with Immunology (My boss there Martin Stern had been a Jewish evacuee from Nazi Germany); then Nephrology with Prof John Walls who was Vice President of the Royal College of Physicians; Glenfield Hospital in Cardiology working for the lovely Prof David deBono and then Leicester Royal Infirmary doing General Medicine and Pharmacology/Therapeutics under Prof David Barnett (The first chair of the NICE appraisals committee) and Prof Sir Kent Woods (who was later Chair of the MHRA)
Me 30 years ago as a junior doctor
I decided though to be a GP and had to do some more general training so started in Psychiatry at The Hospital of St Cross in Rugby, then did further 6 month attachments in Paediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynaecology (yes! They used to let me deliver babies using forceps and do gynae ops and all sorts of things!) and a further spell in General medicine with Diabetes and Dermatology.. While there I wrote the trust guidelines on the preparation and use of various IV medicines for the medical department.
August 1997 I started my GP training year in Exmouth – South Park first aired, Princess Diana died and the charts seem to have been entirely unremarkable
Then in October 1998 my first job at Fore Street Surgery, Totnes was to take part in the River Dart Raft Race… and then started at the Surgery the following day.
Fore Street Surgery
I inherited my predecessor, Dr Lewis’s consulting room… the one just down the narrow corridor from the reception desk:
The main corridor in Fore Street Surgery
We did move to the new surgery in March 1999… I remember going to it before it opened to set up and install all the necessary software on the new fangled “computer” things…. prior to that we had been running green LED dumb terminals and paper notes in a basket for each surgery. I think it was about this time I decided mobile phones were likely here to stay, so got one of those old Nokia 5110’s
Totnes Times Article February 1998
Then it is pretty much a blur until now…
Well, not truly a blur... I did do some things...
I was invited to joint he board of Totnes Caring. This charity had been set up by one of my older colleagues years before- he and his wife had run it for years... but he was going to be retiring so I joined the board for a spell before he retired and for years afterwards- spending some time as Chair. The charity was a true leader in the 3rd sector provision for needs which fell outside of the usual auspices of Health or Social care.
I had been the clinical lead for a project being piloted in a few areas nationally called the Integrated Personal Commissioning ...IPC pilot... the idea being to take social care money and channel it to patients to fund things to improve their health.
As I understand it we were the only pilot in the country to successfully get any funds through to patients... and I think I very much helped that happen.
I have been a trainer for doctors planning to become GPs...
Over the years I have helped train over a dozen new GPs- including our Dr Hossack and Dr Berryman. Some of those now train GPs themselves, and at our regional trainers conference in St Ives last year 5 of my previous trainees were there... which felt good.
During Covid, when there was a very realistic possibility of a large number of patients needing to be in hospital or on ventilators the government set up the Nightingale Hospitals.
It became clear that the projections were coming closer but the Exeter Hospital had not been set up. I made contact with as many people as I good who though could be influential in the decision to try to give my view that it would be better to have it staffed and up and running and empty than unprepared with people dying...
As it turns out there was no massive surge of illness or death, but we were ready for it.
Exeter was the only Nightingale Hospital in the country used in any way substantially to treat Covid cases, and it was ready to do it as we made sure they were open and ready.
Covid was actually, in my timeline, a major thing. So disruptive to society. I was glad to hear that the little articles I occasionally wrote on Facebook during that time were thought to be helpful.
25 years ago ITV South West filmed for a few days in Leatside- following me through clinics and on home visits and so on... culminating in a half-hour video which I have on VHS somewhere!
I've helped with pieces for the BBC- Jonny Rutherford, John Henderson and Jenny Walrond have all been up to the Surgery to do pieces...
Jonny came up to do a piece on the CRY screening...
It was Weds 22nd Oct. I was just finishing Hockey that evening when I was called over to the side of the pitch by one of the Rugby lads.
One of them had collapsed and subsequently died despite all our efforts at resuscitation.
He was 21 year old trainee teacher Ollie Marsden.
A young life, snuffed out.
Turns out he had Arrythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy. One of the well known causes of sudden cardiac death in the young.
I so remember the prolonged effort to resuscitate him.
My colleague Dr Morris arrived, several paramedics... we worked on Ollie for so long on the grass...
They carried on in the Ambulance en-route to Torbay but eventually efforts had to stop.
I talked to his parents in the relatives room in A&E...
The emotional impact of that day stays with me, but clearly not as much as for his parents.
They did some fund raising through the Rugby Club to set up a series of screening days at the Surgery. Hundreds of young people have now been screened for cardiac defects because of their efforts.
I still can't really talk about it.
Last year (or was it the year before) I was interviewed live on the Today programme on Radio 4 along with the then health minister... It was only about the Flu Vaccine programme for that year and the difficulty is was giving us as GPs in being able to provide the vaccination effort that year.. but my mum was very surprised to hear me on National radio that morning talking to Mishal Hussein!
But now I am able to retire, so I will.
It has been a stressful, demanding pleasure to have been a GP in my home town for 26 years.
I have seen young mums through their pregnancies and then seen those babies grow up and have their own kids (bit of a cliché but it is true!), I’ve tried to help people through cancer and degenerative diseases. It has been rewarding to help patients have decent deaths when it has become clear their conditions require it… and lovely to see people move on if they’ve been lucky enough to have a cure…
I’ve striven to get people the specialist help they need when it was needed… and the decline in availability of specialist care and advice these days has been so disappointing- especially in the area of severe mental health issues.
I’ve had as patients many people I was at school with- both friends and teachers!
There have been many other individual cases that truly stick in my memory for many different reasons.
Throughout all of these trials I hope I have been the GP people needed at the time…
I do understand that General Practice too is not what it once was… but the new technologies need to be embraced… and people to accept that their care is no longer necessarily going to be from a doctor or a nurse; but may be from a paramedic or advanced nurse practitioner… this is only going to get more over the years.
At Leatside we have always sought to make sure that whoever is providing the care is good enough for the job and feels able to seek advice if it is needed… For anyone who has ever worked as an employer, they will know that as a “business culture” and I hope that good culture will be maintained over the years to come.
So, I plan to finish in early September…
I will of course carry on normal duties until then.
If for whatever reason you don’t get to see me before I leave, don’t worry… I remember you all fondly…
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