With more than 15 years’ experience of leadership roles at the RCGP, president Professor Mike Pringle is a wise sounding-board for his colleagues.
This year has seen him play a key part in the RCGP’s Put Patients First campaign.
He has retired from his Nottingham practice but keeps busy in a variety of roles, including emeritus professor of general practice at the University of Nottingham, strategic director of PRIMIS, and a board member at Arthritis UK.
But he is happiest when out and about meeting fellow GPs, which this year included a tour of practices in North Wales and the RCGP conference in Harrogate.
What these visits bring home is the stress that GPs across the UK are under ‘as their workload piles up, and resources diminish,’ he says.
As a young doctor starting out he wishes he could have envisaged just how much primary care would change in his working life. For those just embarking on a career in general practice he says: ‘Remember that, while you are an expert doctor, your patients are experts in their health.’
And a little known fact – in his spare time, he writes fiction. His novel The Gothic Line is available as an e-book.
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