About
A doctor who knows you already.
Nearly twenty years across the NHS and private practice, and still in both, every week.
- Special interest in cardiovascular risk and metabolic health
- MRCGP, Member of the Royal College of General Practitioners
- MBBS, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry
- BSc Biochemistry, King's College London
- GP Partner, PCN Clinical Director, and Co-Chair of Medway and Swale GP Federation
Why I built this practice.
I'm a GP with nearly 20 years across the NHS and private practice. I built this practice because general practice has lost the two things that actually change outcomes, time and continuity, and faster appointments don't put them back.
I still work in the NHS every week. I'm a GP Partner, a PCN Clinical Director, and Co-Chair of the Medway and Swale GP Federation. So when you need a specialist opinion, I know how both systems work and how to get you to the right specialist, in the right place. Most private doctors work in one system. I work in both, every week.
A clinic can match anyone's response time. What no one can copy is one doctor who holds your whole picture and reads each of your numbers against the rest of you. That's the whole model. Fifty adults, each one known properly.
Most people don't need more healthcare. They need a doctor who was already watching.
Background
How I got here.
Born and raised in Kent, and I've never lived anywhere else. Nor has my family.
I went to King's to read biochemistry because I wanted to understand how the body actually works. A year or two in I knew the lab wasn't it. Everything happened at one remove, and what I wanted was the people and the results in front of me. So I went to Barts for medicine, then trained at Medway Maritime and around Kent.
The plan was emergency medicine, and I spent a year doing it. It's the right job for someone without small children at home, and I had three. What I gave up in adrenaline I got back in continuity, which turned out to be the part of medicine I actually cared about.
I did my GP training at Memorial Medical Centre in North Kent and became a partner there in 2018, in the practice that trained me. Nearly twenty years in, I've looked after every kind of patient this county has: the deprived and the comfortable, newborns and the dying, and most of the problems in between.
I'm also a registered medical officer with the British Boxing Board of Control and accredited with England Boxing, and I cover shows. When a fighter is in front of you with a vague history and a decision to make, there's no system behind you to catch what you miss.
How I work
What I look for, and what I won't do.
Lipoprotein(a) is inherited. You either have a high level or you don't, and no amount of exercise, clean eating or weight loss will shift it. It roughly doubles the risk of heart disease in the people who carry it, it needs measuring exactly once in a life, and it costs a few pounds. It rarely appears on a standard health check, private or NHS.
Which means the person most likely to be caught out by it is the one who looks after themselves, has a normal cholesterol, a good weight and no family history they know about, and gets told every time that everything is fine. Everything is fine, on the tests anyone bothered to run. That's why it's on every baseline panel I do.
The same thinking decides what I won't do. I don't prescribe controlled drugs, and I won't continue someone else's. A private doctor paid by the patient is exactly the doctor most likely to say yes, which is why I decided the answer in advance.
I'm curious, and I don't stop poking at something until I understand it properly, which is usually a good thing for the person on the other side of it.
Where I am
Of Kent, not just covering it.
My NHS practice is in Sittingbourne. I trained in it and I've been a partner there since 2018, so there are families on my list I've now looked after for the best part of twenty years.
Privately I cover Kent and the South East. Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells are half an hour to an hour from my door depending on the M20, which is closer than most of my members are to a London clinic.
Member feedback
What members say.
Personal and holistic. Understanding the whole picture, not a figures-only approach, and listening rather than working to a threshold.
Andrew W. · memberBeing able to speak about issues and concerns at length, and on a more personal level. Having things like blood test results explained in depth.
Kerry W. · memberIt helped me understand some of the causes of metabolic syndrome, and the importance of the core elements to overcome the symptoms. I developed a knowledge of how the basic functions of your body respond to diet and exercise to carry me forward.
Paul R. · memberThe Long View, in two pages.
The few things that actually decide how long and how well you live, and how to tell the signal from the noise. I'll send it to you now.