Outside work 14th May 2013
Some patients and staff have expressed an interest in some of the other work I am involved with
outside of the practice.
For the last fifteen years I have been involved in running a course for the medical students in
Southampton on familiarising them with complementary medicine. Over the last year Trish Ridsdale
has taken this over and is adding a fresh dimension to this work. My time commitment to the
medical school in Southampton has grown to a day a week (usually Fridays). I have come to realise
that an important part of enabling students to approach patient holistically is to get them to
appreciate themselves and their own wellbeing from a more whole person perspective. This has led
into teaching on the personal professional development of students and over the last three years to
chair the professionalism advisory group for the school of medicine. This is quite an influential
subcommittee that has had a significant input into the new curriculum that is starting in October and
makes explicit the importance of personal professional development for students. Those of you who
have heard me talk about being a ‘survivor’ of medical school will know about my heart felt
commitment to healing the medical care system.
Another aspect of my educational work is with a small group of doctors running the training
programme for GP trainers. This group trains the doctors and supports their development of
doctors who are working as GP trainers. This entails running courses for these doctors and providing
support for those doctors involved with GP education. This is a very natural outlet for me with my
interest in clinical supervision and for those of you that have seen my book on this know I am keen
to take the principles that I found helpful in building a sustainable practice which include facilitated
reflective time and supervision in making this available to other doctors. One of the key practices is
that if I think we can help doctors look at and learn from the things that we find difficult or we don’t
do well it has the most hope for allowing us to develop not only how we develop but how the
services we want to provide the patients can develop.
My commitment to the development of medicine is also reflected in my interest in homeopathic
training. Some of you will know of the book I edited on the principles and practices of homeopathy
which grew out of a course a couple of colleagues and I ran for a number of years for doctors and
vets on homeopathy. During this time I was the president of the Faculty of Homeopathy which is the
professional organisation for registered health care practitioners using homeopathy. I have been
interested in how our continual education can support us and most recently linked to the on going
appraisal and revalidation of doctors I have been asked by the Faculty to become its first
‘Responsible Officer’ which is a post that recommends to the general medical council on behalf of
the Faculty of Homeopathy those doctors who are predominantly in independent practice for
revalidation as appropriate.
These are the main educational activities but in addition to attending general conferences I am also
very interested in new natural products that can help patients and am consequently looking out for
an liaising with individuals and companies that are manufacturing and promoting different natural
health care products and trying to evaluate which of these is valuable to introduce in to the practice.