Clare Gerada, the new chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners
I saw Clare on TV (May 2011), recognised the name and thought she looked familiar. I remember Clare and her brother from my teens, I'm pretty sure from the Dogsthorpe Methodist Youth Club.
It is wonderful to see she has become so succesful and in such a worthwhile field, plus it's nice to get a woman into my list of notable people.
Adele
Link to Guardian Article
"Clare Gerada's view of the importance of medicine, and its transformative potential, came from her father, Anthony. "He was a single-handed GP in Peterborough, where I grew up," says the new chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
"It was the days when GPs had 24-hour responsibility, there was the scourge of the telephone ringing at all hours and you were seeing 90 patients a day – 60 in the surgery and 30 on home visits.
"I can recall him going out on overnight calls with his pyjamas on underneath his trousers.
"Sometimes, when I was nine, 10 or 11, he took me on home visits. I saw poverty first hand, I saw people living in slums. Postwar Britain in the 60s was pretty grim. That shapes you." As a result, Gerada adds, "I've grown up with a sense of social conscience and a sense that if one really, really works hard, you can change people's lives. Clearly that sounds patronising, but you can." "