My work as a Family Medicine Specialist: I qualified as a doctor in 1976, worked as a junior hospital doctor until 1979 and then went on to train as a GP from 1979 – 1981. I then decided I wanted to do research as well as working as a GP, and was lucky to get a 3-year epidemiology training fellowship which allowed me to continue to practice as a GP part time but also allowed me to do a Masters in Epidemiology and to learn about research methods and statistics. Once I had this qualification, I started to do research of my own, and to develop my career as an academic general practitioner. In 1987, I was appointed as a Senior Lecturer in Imperial College London and in 1993, I became Professor of Primary Care at University College London. All the time I worked in the University, I continued to work as a GP for 1-2 days a week and I did that for 30 years until I eventually retired in 2012. In 2013 I was awarded the President’s medal by the Royal College of General Practitioners.
My work as a teacher: As an academic, I was involved in developing teaching programmes for medical students as well as research. My main educational interest was in the potential to use family medicine as a setting where medical students could learn about all aspects of medicine, not just family medicine. This programme resulted in a major increase in the amount of time medical students spent in general practice also directed the International Training Course for General Practice which ran for 6 years from 1991 – 1997 attracting many of the future leaders of family medicine in Europe.
My work as a researcher: My research has been largely to do with the prevention of illness caused by alcohol misuse, and I have worked for most of my career on promotion of health and the identification and management by GPs of patients with risky drinking patterns. As well as leading a number of studies in this area, I have been involved in several international research collaborations. I currently lead an international programme of research into the effectiveness of using the Internet to deliver screening and brief interventions for alcohol problems in primary care settings.