NEXT GEN NABS: SIMON GREGORY

What role(s) do you hold at the moment?

Deputy Medical Director, Primary and Integrated Care, Health Education England; Sessional GP, King Edward Road Surgery, Northampton; RCGP Council Trustee and Chair of Committee on Medical Ethics.

What brings you the most joy at work?

Interactions with others, whether that is patients, staff colleagues or trainees. I love helping people to be the best that they can be.

What is your biggest challenge?

Meeting the increasing GP recruitment targets whilst continuing to reform GP Specialty Training. We have some really exciting changes coming.

What’s the best leadership/career advice you’ve ever recieved?

“Keep your integrity and others will come back to you in the end.”

Who have your role models been?

I’d like to highlight 3 (though there have been many more and I hope that no one will be upset): David Tweddle – Mr. Tweddle was my form teacher at school. He believed that I could become a doctor and supported me but also, because he was such a generous, kind and gentle man.

Catti Moss – Catti was my GP Trainer. She was a brilliant trainer and a great and much-loved GP. In my first tutorial she shared that my training would be about the art of being a GP. We didn’t do too many clinical tutorials as we’d both read books and then spend a tutorial recalling our reading.

Derek Gallen – Derek gave me my first job in healthcare education, he taught me the importance of professionalising what we do and also of spending time looking after staff and colleagues.

What has been the proudest moment of your career to date?

Sorry, I know that people will groan, but, it was getting my MRCGP. I wanted to be a GP from age 11 so felt I had reached the peak of Everest. But, also, as I see the College as important to support the values and the unique nature of our specialty. Also as I was lucky to live to receive it as I get so stressed by exam’s that after the oral exams in the Long Room at 14 Princes Gate I walked out as straight into the traffic and I have no idea how the black cab stopped; but I did learn some new words from him.

What have you learned about yourself in lockdown?

COVID-19 has made me focus on our mortality and the importance of time with and valuing family and friends. I have a renewed sense of what is important to me, and more importantly, what is not.

What are you reading at the moment? ……and (no judgement) the last film you watched..

I always have 2 books on the go, one fiction and one non-fiction. The current two are Double Agent by Tom Bradbury and Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men. The last film I watched was Bombshell.