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 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 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… 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 during that time were thought to be helpful.
I have been able to train some new GPs in the last few years… and some of them are now training GPs themselves, which is nice.
I was on the board of trustees of Totnes Caring for a number of years, and Chair for a while… Helping like that in your community where you can is so fulfilling.
I’ve been on the TV and radio a couple of times… which was always a bit terrifying.. especially the Today Programme on Radio 4
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…
