Features: New decade, new Chief Executive
GMC Chief Executive, Niall Dickson.
29 January 2010
Niall Dickson took up his post as Chief Executive of the GMC in January.
Here he tells us about his career in healthcare and his views on medical regulation in the years to come.
From a manager at Age Concern England to editor of the Nursing Times, from BBC health correspondent and later social affairs editor to Chief Executive of The Kind’s Fund, how has your career so far prepared you for your new role at the GMC?
I hope it has given me a breadth of experience and the opportunity to view the world from very different perspectives. I have been fortunate to work for some great organisations covering the public, private and voluntary sectors, each one with its own distinctive culture and ambition. For the past 26 years I have worked in and around healthcare and that should have given me some understanding of the world in which the GMC has to work.
More recently I have learnt a great deal from my involvement in the work of the Royal College of Physicians on medical professionalism and in writing my report for the Department of Health (England) on how healthcare regulators should work to secure the confidence of patients and the professions for which they are responsible.
If you had to highlight a moment or an achievement during your career what would it be?
The most moving was covering the report into the shooting of 16 primary school children in Dunblane – the courage and strength of ordinary people having to deal with extraordinary events takes your breath away. It is of course what many doctors see every day as they support people at some of the most traumatic moments of their lives. I am proud of what was achieved during my time at The King’s Fund which, like the BBC, is a great British institution and is a force for good.
How do you think the medical profession and its regulation are viewed from the outside world?
The evidence is clear on this. The standing of the medical profession throughout the UK is excellent. It is a tribute to the commitment and dedication of doctors, that trust in them consistently exceeds any other profession. And this applies whether you are talking to people about doctors in general or about their own experience as patients.
It is not a trust that should ever be taken for granted and the demands on all professions are changing but it is a good place to be. On regulation, I suspect that most members of the public rarely give it much thought and that most think the GMC is just about fitness to practise which is just one, albeit important, aspect of what we do.
What are your impressions of the GMC? What do you hope to achieve while at the helm?
I suspect it is too early to reach any definitive view. What I would say is that the GMC has been through a difficult period and all the signs are that it has emerged stronger and more focused. The new council is clear about what it wants to achieve and I have been enormously impressed by the quality and the commitment of the staff.
I am sure a regulator will never be loved, but my ambition is that the GMC will be widely respected by the profession and the public and that it will be seen less as the organisation that pursues bad doctors and more one that promotes high standards of education and care and affirms good practice.
There are challenges ahead but they are also fantastic opportunities – not least revalidation and the future development of post graduate education. All this, of course, will have to be delivered in a much more constrained healthcare system. Nevertheless, I am confident the GMC can create a new and better relationship with patients, doctors, employers and the politicians who set the NHS budget.
What do you see as the most important challenges for the GMC and for the medical profession?
For the GMC, I guess it has to be making sure we introduce revalidation in a way that has meaning and purpose but does not impose an unnecessary burden on doctors or the organisations for whom they work. For the profession, it will be finding ways to maintain and improve the quality of care when resources are not keeping pace with demand.
There is increasing divergence between the four countries of the UK in healthcare delivery – how can we benefit from each other’s innovations in healthcare?
I suspect more by luck than good judgement we now have a large scale experiment underway – the principles behind the NHS in each of the four parts of the UK are the same but the delivery mechanisms are different and diverging. My worry has always been that instead of learning from each other there will be too much vested interest in each claiming to have found the right model.
At The King’s Fund, we found out early on that comparisons were being made more difficult by the different ways in which statistics were being collected. But I am sure this can be overcome if the will is there. In our own field of medical regulation I do hope we can learn from different approaches to practice. As we are a UK body we should never be afraid of learning from experience in each of its constituent parts, nor indeed from regulation in other countries.
When you are not concentrating on healthcare, how do you wind down?
After 16 years at the BBC witnessing momentous events I am still a news junkie, I play golf and tennis (not very well) and like most people, it is my family, friends and colleagues who keep me going.