Hospital Dr invited Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health (RCPCH) to answer 13 questions and complete a half written sentence.
1. What is the biggest challenge facing the profession?
“Not being a profession. The new consultant contract introduced to the NHS in 2003 concentrated too much on the time sensitive or time sheet approach, creating a sense that doctors are tradesmen paid by the hour, rather than professionals.”
2. When did you last laugh and why?
“Yesterday when my very thin 17-year-old son asked for a bowl of coco pops half-an-hour after two huge bacon sandwiches.”
3. What are the RCPCH’s priorities over the next year?
“Children, children and children always first. Ensuring our paediatricians are among the best trained in the world; integrating the European Working Time Directive and maintaining a quality health service for children; revalidation; and service reconfiguration.”
4. Which person influenced you the most and why?
“My father. He taught me to be sceptical but not cynical.”
5. What is your favourite piece of music?
“Bach Cello Suites.”
6. Has medicine become too protocol driven?
“No. If there is a current, optimal way to manage a condition, every patient who fits the inclusion criteria should be managed that way or be in a randomised trial. ‘Post-code’ treatment, or treatment following what the doctor was taught 20 years ago, has no place.”
7. What is your guiltiest pleasure?
“Chocolate.”
8. What was your most embarrassing professional moment?
“Not knowing the diagnosis - still happens every day.”
9. Of what achievement are you most proud?
“Being elected by my peers as president of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health.”
10. When were you most in danger?
“Driving alone across the Great Karoo desert as a medical student in a 15-year-old car which I had borrowed.”
11. How will paediatrics cope with an increasingly part-time workforce?
“Paediatrics will cope very well. My personal experience is that the service receives more than the sum of the parts when doctors job-share. Inevitably, however, comprehensive twice a day hand-over has become much more important than when I was resident in a hospital continuously from 9 am Friday until 5 pm Monday. I have no wish to go back to that and I am sure patients feel the same.”
12. What are the hallmarks of an excellent paediatric team?
“Knowledgeable, skilful, sensitive, multidisciplinary care by a group of professionals who trust each another and enjoy their work.”
13. How will the royal colleges maintain their relevance?
“By being fit for purpose and fit for the 21st century. We must be relevant to our members and to society’s priorities. We must engage with the media and the public. That is why the RCPCH involved young people in appointing our new chief executive.”
Finish this sentence: trainees working a 48-hour week will…still be trained to be among the best doctors in the world but be able to enjoy a reasonable work-life balance along the way.
Tags: Interview, Paediatrics
“Not being a profession. The new consultant contract introduced to the NHS in 2003 concentrated too much on the time sensitive or time sheet approach, creating a sense that doctors are tradesmen paid by the hour, rather than professionals.”
Whlist I agree with Professor Stephenson I suspect that the process has already gone too far to be retrieved and is but a reflection of the desire to remove all essence of a liberal profession using the pretence that the public (for which read politicians) really want this. NHS Employers much prefer to foster the notion that doctors are just employees as that way a docile workforce may be ensured.
George Bernard Shaw may have said that “professions are a conspiracy against the laity” but he also said some pithy things about politicians and civil servants that one hears quoted much less frequently.
Where I would differ with Professor Stephenson is that I would date the decline to the move from individual responsibility for medical protection provision to that of corporate coverage