Doctors Need To Change With The Times, Says Sir Cyril Chantler, Marsden Lecture, England

Main Category: Primary Care / General Practice
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 26 Nov 2008 - 4:00 PST

email to a friend   printer friendly   view / write opinions   rate article

"Doctors need to change in line with modern medicine". This was the advice of Sir Cyril Chantler, chair of UCL Partners, speaking at the annual Marsden Lecture at the Royal Free Hospital.

"Modern medicine has changed so doctors need to change. If they do, they will clearly continue to benefit their patients and would be more content," he said.

He said there were three paradoxes at the heart of medicine:

-- Doctors have never before been able to do so much for patients but doctors are still criticised and unhappy

-- Society has never spent so much on health care but health care is still short of resources

-- People have never lived so long but the prevalence of disease and disability has never been higher

The answers, Sir Cyril argued, were for doctors to get to the absolute root of patients' problems when diagnosing. "We need to go further than just what is obviously wrong. What is wrong and why is it wrong?"

Key to delivering on this were a "broad and deep" scientific education for doctors and taking responsibility for individual patients, population health and the delivery of healthcare.

Underpinning all of this should be solid team work and a good relationship between managers and leaders within the organisation.

"The art of leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision; the science of management is of the mind, a matter of calculation, statistics, timetables and routine. Together everyone achieves more."

The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust is renowned for its specialist services including liver, kidney and bone marrow transplantation, renal, AIDS/HIV, infectious diseases, plastic surgery, immunology, paediatric gastroenterology, ENT surgery and audiological medicine, amyloidosis and scleroderma. We run a major accident and emergency service, all branches of surgery and medicine, a renal service serving the whole of north London, paediatrics, maternity services, care of elderly people, an adolescent psychiatric service and one of two high security infectious diseases units in the country. We are a leading haematology centre and a major neuroscience base with a network extending throughout north London and into the Home Counties. We have associated internationally recognised research and training programmes. For more information visit www.royalfree.nhs.uk.

We are a member of the academic health science partnership UCL Partners. The Royal Free was the only teaching hospital in London to be rated excellent for services and excellent for use of resources in the 2008 Healthcare Commission annual health check.

Royal Free Hamsptead NHS Trust
www.royalfree.nhs.uk