47. Dr Chris Salisbury

The work of the Bristol GP, who heads the Centre for Academic Primary Care at the University of Bristol, provides vital evidence about what works (and what doesn’t) in general practice.

This year he led a study of 400 UK GP practices that found very few are offering email or Skype-style consultations and that most have no plans to introduce them in the future.

Dr Salisbury warned at the time that patients hardly using online services, supporting what most grassroots GPs have said for a long time, the situation won’t change unless digital services demonstrate their clear usefulness to GPs and patients.

Dr Salisbury, who is chair of the RCGP Scientific Foundation Board, was also co-author with Professor Richard Hobbs on a landmark study released earlier this year that revealed general practice workload has increased by 16% from 2007 to 2014 while patients are seeing their GP 14% more than they did seven years ago. 

As well as all that, Professor Salisbury says his other achievements are publishing the book the ABC of multimorbidity and becoming an NIHR Senior Investigator.

He has other studies up his sleeve, based on improving management of multimorbidity in general practice and the role of email, phone and skype as alternatives to face to face consultations. 

What’s most enjoyable about his job? ’Feeling that I’m making a worthwhile contribution to debate by providing hard evidence about the costs and benefits of new approaches to delivering care in general practice.’ And this is definitely what he does do.

Why influential: Thoughtful GP producing practical research

Surprising fact: Decided to be a GP the night before the VTS deadline