College Awards 2010
Congratulations to the recipients of the 2010 College Awards that were presented on Friday 3 September 2010 at the RNZCGP Annual Conference: 'Doing the Right Thing' held at the Christchurch Convention Centre.
College Awards 2010
Honorary Fellowship
Distinguished Fellowship
Distinguished Service Medal
Primex Award
Peter Anyon Medal
Eric Elder Medal
Orator Medal
HONORARY FELLOWSHIP
Honorary Fellowship may be conferred by the Council to individuals of distinction who cannot be Fellows of the RNZCGP, who have made an outstanding contribution to the cause of general practice or to the medical profession in general, and who need not be graduates of medicine.
Christopher David Mitchell - Northern New South Wales
A rural general practitioner in northern New South Wales for more than 20 years, Chris Mitchell was elected as President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) in October 2008. A general practice mentor, supervisor and examiner, he also chairs the Education Sub-Committee of the Committee of Presidents of Australian Medical Colleges.
Chris was previously the chair of the RACGP’s National Rural Faculty, and has shown impressive dedication to rural general practice issues.
A Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, he has gained over 10 years’ experience in director roles of not for profit boards, including Australia's National Prescribing Service, the Therapeutic Guidelines Limited, Northern Rivers GP Network, the New South Wales Rural Workforce Agency, the Rural Doctors Network (RDN), the Remote Vocational Training Scheme (RVTS), and an appointment as the foundation chair of North Coast General Practice Training.
A great friend of the RNZCGP, Chris has made a considerable contribution towards strong trans-Tasman ties. His stellar major presentations, and publication contributions, include ‘Do we have a sickness or a wellness health system and what is the future?’ to the Australian General Practice Network Forum, Australia's Medical Workforce Trends and Issues ‘A Train Crash in the Making’ in Hong Kong in 2009 and a terrific presentation to the RNZCGP Quality Symposium in 2010.
Chris remains committed to his Lennox Head medical practice in northern New South Wales.
DISTINGUISHED FELLOWSHIP
The Distinguished Fellowship is awarded for outstanding and sustained services either to the science or practice of medicine, or the aims or work of the College. Service to any organisation which may directly or indirectly benefit General Practice, medicine as a whole, or the health and welfare of the community, may be taken into account.
Tana Gail Fishman - Auckland
Dr Fishman came to New Zealand in 2000 from Philadelphia. From the time she began working at Trust Health Care, Manurewa, it became clear that she was a person of considerable energy and talent, an excellent clinician and communicator. As Director of Undergraduate Teaching in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care she managed to place 120 students in one year. She demonstrated great creativity in providing students with an excellent experience in general practice. She went on to become Chairperson of the Board of Education, then Joint Chair of the Education Advisory Committee and is currently a member of the Executive Board of the College. With these dual roles she has a unique view of general practice education. She is now on the government Workforce committee. She is great fun to work with and has the highest standard of clinical care and community responsibility.
Jonathan Edward Mark Fox - Auckland
Jonathan is the immediate Past President of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners and is currently a member of the Medical Council of New Zealand. Until recently he was the Chair of the Council of Medical Colleges in New Zealand and has been an Independent Clinical Advisor to ACC’s Treatment Injury Unit. He is a Board member of the NZMA and also ProCare, the Auckland IPA. He is also a member of various charitable and research trusts in the Auckland region.
Previous positions have included membership of the GP Council of the NZMA, Competence Advisory Team of the Medical Council, Medical Officer to Kings College Auckland, and many RNZCGP Auckland Faculty positions.
Jonathan qualified from Guys Hospital Medical School in London in 1974. He then spent seven years as a Medical Officer in the Royal Navy – including three and a half years as a Submarine Medical Officer and two years in Hong Kong before completing his Vocational Training in the UK. After leaving the Navy he spent eight years as a General Practitioner in Rugby, UK, where he was also Medical Officer to Rugby School.
He migrated to New Zealand in 1990 with his wife and their family. Over the last 19 years their practice has grown and become established as a five doctor practice in Meadowbank Auckland.
He was recently awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Australian College of General Practitioners.
Janet Seymour Frater - Auckland
Janet Frater studied medicine at the University of Auckland and was awarded the Douglas Robb prize for being the top student in her final year. As a general practitioner in Auckland for many years, she has managed to balance clinical work and family life with a generous and growing contribution to the work of the College. As well as serving on the Board of the Auckland Faculty and being a PRIMEX examiner for many years, she has been a seminar facilitator and since 2008 a medical educator with responsibility for the seminar programme of GPEP1 in Auckland. Janet has also done work for the Medical Council as a mentoring co-ordinator, competence reviewer and educational supervisor. She has been medical advisor to Interserve with an interest in the health of aid and mission workers. Colleagues of Janet find her always enthusiastic, supportive, well organised and displaying great wisdom and insight.
Steven Lillis - Hamilton
Steven Lillis may be found in multiple places and nearly always in leadership and governance positions. His medical education was completed at the University of Auckland and his Masters of General Practice through Otago University. You may know him in his role as Medical Advisor, as well as his role as Director of Examinations, for Medical Council of New Zealand. His membership with the International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities finds him in conversations with committee members around the world.
Dr Lillis will be celebrating the completion of his PhD in the next few months – he is an expert in the field of psychometrics. His role with the RNZCGP has focused on Primex and the assessment future of General Practitioners. Ask him for his ideas and you will find yourself embedded in a conversation and enjoying psychometrics quite by surprise.
In his Senior Lecturer position at the Waikato Clinical School, Steven was teaching and overseeing year 6 medical students for seven years. He worked closely with medical educators around undergraduate medical education and developed innovative approaches in teaching and learning environments.
Simultaneously, Steven Lillis has served on the Board of Directors for Pinnacle PHO as well as dedicated time in clinical practice. He concentrates much of his clinical work on Sports Medicine and did complete the Diploma in Sports Medicine in the late ‘90s. A strategic move on his part and an important knowledge base to have, given his dedication to extreme running - hills, roads, mountains and beyond.
He loves to cook and has a deep appreciation for the culinary arts. One could say that his strategies are sound for a man who probably burns up more calories in a week than his entire medical school class of 1986.
He is fast, focused and found at the airport if you are trying to locate him. The RNZCGP is very happy to have him as a friend, advisor, colleague, and mentor.
Stephen Paul McCormack - Christchurch
Dr Stephen Paul McCormack graduated from the University of Otago in 1975, gaining Fellowship of the College in 1999. For over 20 years he has made an outstanding contribution to organised general practice both locally and nationally. He was an early Director and Chair of the trend-setting Christchurch 24 Hour Surgery. He was founding Director of Pegasus Health, and between 1992 and 2008 contributed variously as managing director, chair and executive chair. He helped to shape the evolution of organised general practice in New Zealand both through Pegasus and nationwide through the establishment of IPAC.
He continues to provide a high level contribution to primary care in various roles as an independent consultant. He was pandemic planning team adviser to the CDHB during the flu epidemic. He is a contractor in the MOH team responsible for implementing government primary care policy – intended to shape the delivery of future primary care following the recent review of the New Zealand health system called Meeting the Challenge. He is Deputy Chair of the West Coast DHB and has recently completed a role as chair of the Government’s Access to Highly Specialised Medicines Review Panel.
John Campbell Murdoch - Tapanui
Described once in the Otago Daily Times as a ‘maverick’, Campbell takes pride in this, being “strongly independent of thought and action” throughout a career full of high achievement.
Born and educated in Scotland he left a career in surgery for general practice starting on research into community health issues that led firstly to finishing an MD and then as a GP academic, completing a PhD.
Recruited as the first Elaine Gurr Professor of General Practice in Otago, Campbell initiated and supported general practice research in New Zealand and along with Peter Snow, is forever linked with myalgic encephalomyelitis – Tapanui Flu. As well as university work Campbell found time to serve on our College Council on three occasions, once as Deputy-Chair.
Other professorships followed: as Chair of the Department of Family Medicine in United Arab Emirates, Head of the Department of Primary Care at Asean-Sheffield in Malaysia, and latterly as Head of the newly formed Rural Clinical School of Western Australia.
In between times he served as a rural GP in Winton, as Editor of the New Zealand Family Physician, authored some 84 peer reviewed papers on numerous topics, and served on many committees and working parties.
Campbell has received numerous distinctions throughout his career. He values most highly the recognition he was given upon leaving Western Australia by the Rural Clinical School, which established “The Campbell and Annie Murdoch Prize for Rural and Remote Medicine”.
Campbell is now serving the community of West Otago in Tapanui – a fitting new beginning in an already distinguished general practice career.
Garry Harold Nixon - Alexandra
Dr Garry Nixon is a Fellow of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners. He works intermittently as a GP but his major contribution has been as a highly respected, secondary care generalist working at Dunstan Hospital in Alexandra, Central Otago.
He was Chair of the working party which formulated the successful application to the Medical Council of New Zealand for the establishment of Rural Hospital Medicine as a speciality with a defined, unique, scope of practice.
While there were other Medical Colleges in New Zealand and Australia which could have provided a home for the new Division of Rural Hospital Medicine, Garry Nixon and his working party decided that the RNZCGP was the most appropriate College to join.
He has provided distinguished service to the College and the Division of Rural Hospital Medicine.
Leslie John Toop - Christchurch
Currently Canterbury Faculty rep on the College Council, Christchurch Fellow Les Toop has a long, distinguished involvement with the College.
Les has worked in the same inner city practice in Christchurch for 25 years. In 1997 he was appointed as the first Professor of General Practice at the University of Otago, Christchurch. He is committed to medical education at all levels, and is the Clinical Leader for Education at Pegasus Health and chairs the clinical governance group at Partnership Health PHO.
In his second term on Council, Les Chairs the College’s Research and Education Charitable Trust, he has published dozens of acclaimed articles, and been significantly involved in numerous national and international conferences. Les has been actively involved in general practice clinical research for two decades and has an MD thesis on asthma recognition in children. Along with others he has campaigned for independent consumer health information both in New Zealand and internationally.
Professor Toop remains a staunch advocate for professionalism, for independent high-quality general practice and for the provision of evidence informed education for general practice teams.
John Terence Wellingham - Auckland
For over a decade, John was closely involved in the design and establishment of CORNERSTONE. Part-time director of Auckland University’s Medical Faculty’s Goodfellow Quality Assurance Unit for seven years, he visited England in 2006 on behalf of the RNZCGP to review their Quality Outcomes Framework. A noted member of College Council and Executive, he was Chair of the RNZCGP Board of Quality and the Quality Advisory Committee from 2007 through to 2010.
John is committed to team-based processes that support high quality patient centred and evidence based care. He eloquently makes the case for the essential efficacy of primary care in any health system.
John has many years of Maori health service, and believes general practice should continually improve, and demonstrate, the contribution we make to reducing inequalities. John developed Counties Manukau DHB’s impressive Chronic Care Management programme, in his role as Medical Director. His approach, adaptable for Maori kaupapa, reduced the incidence and impact of chronic conditions through increased patient engagement.
A general practitioner for more than twenty years, John has given a huge amount to his profession and is a much respected and loved practitioner.
DISTINGUISHED SERVICE MEDAL
Anthony John Eames - Nelson
An Edinburgh graduate vocationally trained as a GP in North East England, Tony moved to Wakefield in Nelson in1988 from County Durham, and has since been the backbone of the RNZCGP sub faculty, taking over this role from Ted Bassett who was one of the RNZCGP founding members.
Virtually single handedly he has run the sub faculty as Secretary for 20 years, Treasurer for 16 years and occasionally filling in as Chairperson, organising not only the meetings and conferences involving both Nelson and Marlborough GPs but also keeping the College’s profile to the fore through liaising with South Link Health, the Nelson Marlborough DHB and the Nelson Bays PHO on matters of importance to general practice. His dedication to this work has been far in excess of that of any other GP in the region and is central to the continued functioning of this sub faculty.
Clare Francesca Healy - Christchurch
Clare is a GP in Christchurch, working at the Halswell Medical Centre. She has contributed in many ways to help educate and improve the standard of care provided by General Practitioners.
For approximately four years she was GP Liaison for Christchurch Women’s Hospital. She worked hard to improve the interface between primary and secondary care. She believed that the key to the improvement was looking at the issues from all points of view and then identifying inefficiencies and establishing processes that suited all parties. She helped ensure General Practitioners were upskilled in insertion of Mirena IUDs and could perform pipelle biopsies or provide the service for other practitioners. She developed guidelines of the common gynaecological problems for general practitioners, improving the quality of referrals and enabling patients to be treated in a more timely manner.
While doing all of the above she also was Clinical Director of the Cambridge Clinic, which provides medical assessment for adults, adolescents and children following alleged sexual abuse. She has been President of Doctors for Sexual Abuse Care [DSAC] for three years and on the national executive for nine years. She is a contributing author to the DSAC Manual and also to a GP resource regarding response to family violence. She helps educate doctors and other health care workers, as well as police and social workers in the area of the medical management of sexual abuse. She has recently completed her Masters in Forensic Medicine through Monash University.
Clive Douglas Hunter - Christchurch
Dr Clive Hunter, a long serving doctor partner at Christchurch South Health Centre Limited since 1980, has a vast range of medical interests and strengths. He has contributed to the GP Registrar Training Programme for the past 28 years.
Clive has worked for the 24 Hour After Hours Surgery both as a Board Member and Chairperson, for 13 years.
Dr Hunter has a diploma in the treatment of addiction and alcohol and he manages most of the Health Centre’s patients with these illnesses.
His interests include sports medicine, food, wine and cinema.
Graham Robert Burton McGeoch - Lyttelton
Graham Robert Burton McGeoch is a respected colleague and thought leader who has quietly and modestly worked for the betterment of Christchurch general practice since first coming to New Zealand from Britain almost 30 years ago. He qualified MB ChB from the University of Bristol in 1979. In New Zealand he gained a Dip Obst from Otago in 1981, Membership of the College in 1993 and Fellowship in 1998, while also acquiring a Diploma of Musculoskeletal Medicine and Diploma of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine along the way.
Dr McGeoch and his partners redeveloped Barrington Medical Centre, one of the first integrated health centres in Christchurch. He was early to recognise the benefits to be gained for patients by extending the skills of general practitioners to provide more community based care and was a prime mover in establishing the Pegasus Observation Unit at the 24 Hour surgery. As a Director of Pegasus Health he took a lead role at the interface with the hospital working to improve patient care.
More recently he has provided much of the vision and hard work that drives the Canterbury Initiative and the development of Health Pathways. These are evolving as an important aid to general practitioners in finding the best care available for their patients.
Dr McGeoch is also a medical consultant to the hyperbaric unit at Christchurch Hospital. He has a long standing interest in chronic and acute disease care and has made significant contributions to research and the literature of primary care in New Zealand.
Though he is careful to avoid the limelight, his drive and vision is helping to shape the future of medical care in Canterbury for the good of our patients.
Timothy Lionel Phillips - Motueka
Tim has been a loyal and hard working Fellow of the College for many years. He is a team player who promotes collegiality, sees the bigger picture and has vision. His current roles include GPEP medical educator and PGY2 co-ordinator. Tim was solely responsible for expanding GPEP1 into the Nelson/Marlborough region. His current research includes an evaluation of the experience of GP registrars in hospital outpatient clinics.
Tim has worked tirelessly not only to promote General Practice in New Zealand but also to promote the health of developing Pacific Island Nations. He is a co-founder/director of Ecocare Pacific Trust. The Trust’s projects include increasing the availability of access to safe water.
Janice Linda Whyte - Christchurch
Jan has been a General Practitioner for 32 years with all but six years full time.
She has been a GP Teacher for a number of years and a Board member of the Canterbury Faculty since 2000. She was the Canterbury Faculty Chair from 2005-08 and a member of the College Council and Executive.
Jan has a diploma of Palliative Care and was the founding medical director of the Nurse Maude Hospice in Christchurch.
She has been heavily involved with the organisation of four College Annual Conferences while continuing to work tirelessly for her patients and family.
PRIMEX AWARD
Paula Marie Hall West
The Primex Award is presented in recognition of excellence in the General Practice Education Programme.
The top candidate overall in Primex in 2009 was Dr Paula Marie Hall West.
PETER ANYON MEDAL
The purpose of the annual memorial address is to honour the work of Dr Peter Anyon who made a valuable and important contribution to general practice vocational education by setting up a registrar training scheme in Lower Hutt in 1974 and becoming the first regional director. Peter was an active and passionate advocate for quality general practice education.
Anna Louise Maze - Christchurch
Anna, a GPEP1 Registrar in 2009, was invited to give the 'Peter Anyon Address' at this year's conference.
An article about Anna Maze can be viewed in GP Pulse Magazine, October 2010 issue.
ERIC ELDER MEDAL
This medal is awarded in honour of Dr Eric Elder an inspired rural GP who lived and worked in Tuatapere for nearly 60 years. The Eric Elder medal is awarded to a keynote speaker at the RNZCGP Annual Conference.
Iona Heath - United Kingdom
Dr Iona Heath is president of the Royal College of GP’s (RCGP) in the UK and was a GP in Kentish Town, London, from 1975 until her retirement from clinical work in January 2010. The practice is in one of the more deprived areas of London and continues to be at the cutting edge of general practice. She is a member of RCGP Council, and former Chair of both the RCGP International Committee and the RCGP Ethics Committee, and member of the World Organization of Family Doctors (Wonca) Executive Committee.
ORATOR MEDAL
This medal is awarded to a member of the faculty hosting the conference who is selected by their faculty to be the Orator.
Jeffery Charles Shortt - Christchurch
RNZCGP Annual Conference 2010 - Orator