Dr Laura Armitage

Dr Armitage barely had time to settle into her new role as chair of the RCGP’s associate in training committee last September before she was thrown straight into the junior doctors’ battle against the Government’s imposed contract.

Praised by colleagues for being influential during the junior doctors campaign and for her ‘endemic positivity’. The Oxford ST3 trainee wrote to health secretary Jeremy Hunt to voice the concerns of her fellow trainees and called for an ‘immediate rethinking’ of review body plans to restructure trainee pay.

She took to the streets to join the protest against the proposed contract, handing out croissants and tea to fellow trainees, and also wrote to NHS England to oppose the contract, which she said was in ‘direct opposition’ to recruitment initiatives for general practice. Some of her demands were addressed in the revised contract proposals, such as the 13-month period required to gain payment protection if changing specialty.

Dr Armitage has been working on the recruitment initiatives with the RCGP and Health Education England, setting up guidance for entry to the national performers list, and fighting for reassurance from the college’s GP specialty advisory committee that LETBs would not be dictating the number of learning logs a trainee must do each week. 

She says if there was one thing she would change about general practice it would be to see the various GP bodies working closer together, in an Avengers Assemble-style team to ‘revolutionise general practice’. If this last year is anything to go by, it may not be long before she’s spearheading this revolution.

What others say about her: ‘Laura has taken a calm, wise and effective approach during a challenging time to be chair’.