Jude Danby Chair LCARM Group RCGP March 30th 2026

This week I was delighted to receive by old fashioned “snail mail” a lovely card form RCPG celebrating my personal achievement of 40 years as a member of RCGP. Alongside was a letter of thanks from President Sam Everington.

I am now a life member of our college with no more fees to pay!

It got me reflecting on my GP career as approximately 40 years ago Sam and I were both involved in a campaign to reduce GP hours of work.

I remember doing a radio interview describing (perhaps unwisely!) how I threw my bleep (anyone remember those?) across the room during the third night of a weekend on call for pediatrics, before climbing out of bed and responding to check was it the children’s ward, A+E or the neonatal unit that needed me asap.

Those long weekends on call were not safe but those of us who survived them did develop an enduring ability to keep going under pressure.

Talking of keeping going I read with dismay an article in Medscape Global entitled Too Old to Practice? Screening Older Physicians Gains Ground

A Medscape survey cited in the article showed that most physicians were against age-based limitations, although one third of respondents agreed with periodic assessments of cognitive abilities. Physicians do not always report or recognize their own limitations...

Worryingly analysis concluded that many policies designed to screen late-career physicians for cognitive impairment lack basic procedural fairness and legal protection.

Some of you may have viewed the short featuring remarks I made at our wonderful intergenerational day ,keeping the joy in practice when I highlighted the truth that younger GPs are faster at navigating and can teach elders about IT.

My colleague John Tobias is there too saying that “we” are not as up to date as the young doctors…his remark was, of course, intended to apply only to those doctors already retired from clinical practice, when as we all know the pace of change in medicine results in retirees soon having to acknowledge that they are not up to speed across whole the curriculum…. We have other things to do!

We have a wonderful array of Later Career GPs on the LCARM group many of whom are still seeing patients. Some have cautioned that these remarks taken out of a wider context can fall into an ageist trap.. something we are very keen to highlight given our work on Age Inclusive Practice

DO read Ageism : A briefing prepared by the LCARM group to contribute to the RCGP’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Action Plan which you can find signposted from the LCARM webpage on the RCGP website

Next month the LCARM group will meet at 30 ES to share ideas about how to use creativity and support for doctors who face health challenges.

Watch this space…I’ll be reporting back soon.

Have a beautiful Easter