Features: The next chapter
Sir Graeme Catto, who is preparing to step down as Chair of the GMC
25 March 2009
An interview with Sir Graeme Catto as he steps down as Chair of the GMC.
Sir Graeme Catto has overseen many changes at the GMC during his seven years as President and then (in 2009) as Chair. As he prepares to hand over to a successor, he shares some thoughts on the past and the future with GMCtoday.
Have you managed to achieve what you set out to achieve when you first stood for President in 2002?
Over the last few years, the public and the media have increasingly come to recognise the GMC’s role in public protection. This hasn’t always been so. Seven years ago, the profession had lost much of its confidence in the Council, with a stream of medical scandals featuring prominently in the press and damaging public support. Attention was focused on the misdemeanours of a minority of doctors and the GMC’s apparent inability to protect vulnerable patients. We have worked hard to reverse this perception. Today, revalidation is being introduced with widespread support and the Council’s future focus will be on education, standards and ethics. Relationships with all four departments of health are excellent and our role in promoting high-quality medical practice is acknowledged widely.
The future looks pretty good to me. How I wish I could have achieved this years ago!
What are the biggest challenges you think your successor will have to face over the next four years?
The assimilation of PMETB, the implementation of revalidation and the introduction of the Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator are important but not the main challenges. Ensuring that the Council remains valuable to the changing health services in the UK is the key. And to achieve that, the Council must link ever more effectively with patients and the public, the profession itself, the NHS and other healthcare providers, and educators. Reaching out to individual doctors is now technically possible and essential if revalidation is to prove useful.
Do you have any advice for your successor?
Enjoy yourself – and listen to a range of views not just from the great and the good.
What challenges and opportunities in medicine do you think await doctors in the coming decades? How do you think these changes might impact on professional regulation?
Some challenges are already with us. Increased life expectancy emphasises the importance of long-term conditions. Some of these conditions are aggravated by life style, and persuading individuals to alter their way of life is seldom successful. That is true for many modern illnesses from drug and alcohol addiction to diabetes and some infectious diseases.
Of course, changes in society affect doctors too. Long hours on call are no longer acceptable and continuity of care must be ensured in other ways. The result is more and better teamwork, with the patient often being part of the team. That partnership approach allows the necessary expertise to be deployed most effectively while respecting the patient’s autonomy.
And the opportunities for tomorrow’s doctors are limitless. Whatever the future changes in healthcare, doctors will inevitably deal with issues of complexity and uncertainty. Over the years, the science will change and society’s expectations will change but people will stay the same. We all turn to doctors when we are most concerned and vulnerable. The need for care and compassion in medicine is unchanging.
You are Professor of Medicine at Aberdeen, and until 2005 you were Vice-Principal of King’s College London and Dean of Guy’s and St Thomas’. How have you managed to balance your work commitments with your GMC duties?
I have had the great good fortune to work with talented colleagues and always found fulfilment in my professional and personal life. The fascination of medicine in its many guises has linked my various activities, and the years have passed all too soon.
What advice would you give other doctors who would like to explore leadership roles in their careers?
Being a good doctor entails leadership. The process of diagnosis and treatment inevitably requires an ability to work with others. Those doctors wishing to undertake more formal leadership roles must acquire the appropriate knowledge and skills. Two additional attributes are, I think, essential. Individuals must be well regarded in their current role; it is difficult to gain respect if others are aware of significant deficiencies in your own medical practice. And having a clear view of what you are trying to achieve is essential.
How are you going to fill the holes in your diary when you have relinquished your GMC role?
Without much difficulty, I suspect. I am an inveterate fiddler and have a number of projects on the go at any one time, many of which are never finished. My wife, Joan, and I have a couple of English setters and they require constant exercise. With a cottage and some land in the Cairngorms National Park there is never enough time to enjoy the local hills and glens. And inevitably we shall find time to repay the hospitality of our friends who have kept in touch during the decade I have been in London.
My university post will continue after I leave the Council and I shall give more time to the Scottish Stem Cell Network which I chair. Our children now have children of their own who are great fun. The GMC chapter is closing but the story goes on. I don’t want that to end just yet.