Features: Meet the new Chair
Professor Peter Rubin, the new Chair of the GMC.
25 May 2009
Professor Peter Rubin takes office as Chair of the GMC and talks about his career and experiences so far.
You studied Medicine at Cambridge and the Oxford Clinical School? What attracted you to medicine? Was medicine in your family?
By no means. I was the first member of my family to go to university, but I had the good fortune to attend my local grammar school in Redruth, where the teachers – particularly Michael Shaw in Chemistry – opened my eyes to horizons I didn’t know existed. I liked people and was fascinated by science so applied to medical school.
What was the most influential period of your career?
The two years I spent as an American Heart Association Fellow at Stanford Medical Center in California. I was totally converted to the ‘can do’ approach; I learned how to prepare a research grant application; and my writing improved hugely because my supervisor had been an English major at Columbia! On the other hand, the private healthcare system there taught me to appreciate all that the NHS has to offer.
Your main research and clinical interests have been in the medical disorders of pregnancy. Why was this of particular interest and what aspects of the field have you been involved in?
At Stanford I had developed an interest in the drug treatment of high blood pressure. Back in the UK as a senior registrar I became intrigued that obstetricians treated pregnancy hypertension by putting women to bed for 22 hours a day and giving them barbiturates. I wanted to find out if BP drugs would be better but there was strong resistance from many obstetricians who simply ‘knew’ bed rest worked. After much negotiation I did the first randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of blood pressure lowering drugs in pregnancy-induced hypertension and showed that bed rest was ineffective. Blood pressure actually rose in that group.
What prompted you to become a member of the GMC?
It was complete chance. When there was a Council of 104, the universities took it in turn to nominate members. It just happened to be Nottingham’s turn and I was Dean of the Medical School. I entered a whole new world, which was not entirely connected to the one that I normally inhabited. Back then, Council members sat on Professional Conduct Committees and I encountered examples of poor medical practice that were pretty depressing.
Your other major interest is medical education. You chaired the GMC’s Education Committee from 2002 until last year and you were Chair of the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board from 2005 to 2008 as well as being a board member of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Why has education been so important throughout your career?
Really I’m not an educationalist. My career has largely been built on research and clinical practice. I ended up on the Education Committee because of being from a university, really enjoyed the policy development aspects, and then became Chair. It was great fun, not least because of the excellent staff and committee members. PMETB had a pretty dismal start in life and I took on the chairmanship to help get it off the ground after the first Chair left. HEFCE is a bit different because it’s more about the strategic use of money in higher education.
How has medical education changed since your days as a medical student? Has medical education kept abreast of scientific progress and changes in society’s expectations?
There are some very obvious changes – in my clinical course I was in a class of 25, most of whom were men. It’s often said to me that medical students were better and knew more in those days, particularly about anatomy, but there’s a lot of rose-tinting in that. A few years ago, I was giving a guest lecture as a distinguished visiting professor and one of the audience helpfully reminded me that he had taught me anatomy – and that I was the worst student he’d ever had! We get criticised at the GMC for emphasising good communication and listening skills, but actually a lot of the complaints that come our way stem from problems in these areas.
Do you still practise medicine?
Yes, at the moment I still do acute medical ‘takes’ and a hypertension clinic. I enjoy medicine; patients are as fascinating, surprising and challenging as they always were; it’s a pleasure working with junior doctors and my excellent colleagues; and it keeps me connected to reality. But sadly, I don’t think I can sustain this level of clinical involvement much longer.
What can doctors expect from your chairmanship?
There are around 150,000 doctors in active practice in the UK. Most are doing a very good job and opinion polls consistently show that the public quite rightly has huge confidence in the medical profession. As Chair, I want to rebalance our approach and eventually our image. Of course, we must protect the public from the small number of doctors who let the profession down, and we will continue to do so robustly, but we mustn’t lose the medical profession in the process. Equally, I recognise that doctors cannot and will not be immune from changes in society and its expectations. The GMC is not going to be reactive – we will be leading the debate on what society should expect from doctors. I’m also very keen to find better ways of communicating and gathering views of doctors at the front line. Of course, this is much easier now via the internet, but once a month I’m going to meet doctors around the UK to hear their views in person.
Tell us about your other interests.
I’ve always liked rugby and have been a season-ticket holder at the Leicester Tigers for many years. I’ve also been a keen photographer since I was a kid. My other great love is history, but that’s not too different from medicine really because it’s all about people and why they do the things they do.
What have you enjoyed most in your career?
It was actually not something medical. I recently led the development of the new Nottingham Vet School, the first in the UK for over half a century. That was a privilege and a pleasure and was full of experiences which were very novel for me as a doctor. After all, I imagine no previous President of the GMC has been hunted by army dogs!