Michael Dixon: Best health secretary could be Hunt
BMJ 2014; 348 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g18 (Published 15 January 2014) Cite this as: BMJ 2014;348:g18
Biography
Michael Dixon, 61, a founder member of the bow tie fraternity, combines two abiding interests: enhancing the role of general practitioners in commissioning care and promoting integrated health. A GP in Devon, he has been chairman of NHS Alliance since its formation in 1998, has been re-elected every year, and saw its aims made law with the creation of clinical commissioning groups in the 2012 Health and Social Care Bill. He was medical director of the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, which promoted Prince Charles’s views on complementary medicine, and now chairs the College of Medicine, which focuses on improving individual and population health.
What was your earliest ambition?
To be a missionary doctor in Africa.
Who has been your biggest inspiration?
Anthony Barker, a missionary doctor in Africa—in Zululand to be precise—and a Christian Marxist. His incessant good humour and courage against the awfulness of apartheid and his total commitment to his patients were awe inspiring and life changing for me as a student on a gap year who was already signed up to study humanities at Oxford. He also wore a bow tie.
What was the worst mistake in your career?
Allowing myself to be outnumbered and bamboozled by senior managers involved in drawing up guidelines for the corporate governance of primary care trusts into accepting that a trust’s accountable officer should be its chief executive. The result was that all too often clinicians became peripheral to the commissioning process. It has taken me 15 years to remedy that error.
What was your best career move?
Becoming a GP, with its infinite variety and also its increasing potential to improve health and care.
Bevan or Lansley? Who has been the best and the worst health secretary in your lifetime?
Some have been masters of the NHS ship and some mastered by it. Alan Milburn, Patricia Hewitt, Alan Johnson, Andrew Lansley, and Jeremy Hunt have all been, for me, the best. With his instinct for what patients want and his recognition of the central role of general practice and the importance of whole person care and continuity Hunt could well turn out to be the very best.
Who is the person you would most like to thank and why?
Cynthia, a patient with terminal breast cancer, who irritated me immensely by going off to see a Christian healer and getting better for a while. It was one of those “road to Damascus” moments and changed altogether my previously rather conventional perception of biomedicine and healing. This led me to rebalance the importance of conventional science, clinical opinion, and patients’ perception and belief in favour of the patient.
To whom would you most like to apologise?
To my wife and children for having been too often distracted and absent. That said, my older two children have gone into medicine, so it can’t all have been bad.
If you were given £1m what would you spend it on?
A flat in London. I go up to London two or three times a week, and a flat would reduce rail fares and enable my wife and me to see more of each other if she came too.
Where are or were you happiest?
Midge ridden holidays spent walking for miles to Scottish lochs, where we never caught anything larger than a sardine. We always knew that just over the next hill we would reach a loch that would turn out to contain monsters. Also, teaching my children how to fish and discovering carnivorous plants and red squirrels.
What single unheralded change has made the most difference in your field in your lifetime?
The mobile phone. Gone are the days when the whole family had to stay at home for weekends while I was on call. It has been liberating for my family and patients, though with my new iPhone I do wonder who is master and who is servant.
Do you believe in doctor assisted suicide?
It would be an odd thing to believe in. Needing to go to Switzerland to keep within the law may, perversely, be a means of ensuring that the bar is kept high, but it probably should happen in the United Kingdom on an individual and exceptional legal basis.
What book should every doctor read?
A Fortunate Man by John Berger. It can be read in half an afternoon, and though its descriptions of the depth, dilemmas, and sheer romance of general practice are over 50 years old they are every bit as alive today.
What poem, song, or passage of prose would you like mourners at your funeral to hear?
It would have to be the end of the fifth section of T S Eliot’s Little Gidding, starting with, “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”
What is your guiltiest pleasure?
Fishing on weekdays. For many years I have had an annual “alibi” day fishing with a friend—booked months in advance, because anticipation is half the pleasure.
If you could be invisible for a day what would you do?
This rather connects with the last question. It would be to don invisible goggles and flippers and swim with the mighty fish that I have failed to catch, in a gesture of “if you can’t beat them then join them.”
Clarkson or Clark? Would you rather watch Top Gear or Civilisation?
Definitely Civilisation. Clarkson is a feckless waste of precious fossil fuel.
What is your most treasured possession?
A Ronson lighter found on the body of my Uncle Michael. He was an RAF pilot whose engines failed when he was aged only 21. I was named after him.
What personal ambition do you still have?
To help create a health service that is led locally and nationally by clinicians, who lead it with passion and compassion and without self interest. Maybe also to catch a fish so large or surprising that I never need to fish again—but I can wait for that.
Summarise your personality in three words
Optimistic, driven, and pragmatic.
Where does alcohol fit into your life?
It has played a large part, as I am the son of one alcoholic and the brother of two, who died prematurely. From them I know I have the potential to let it get out of control but the strength to ensure that it never will.
What is your pet hate?
This rather follows from the alcohol and Clarkson questions. I hate seeing people shaking champagne bottles and then squirting the wasted champagne over each other after motor races. It is not only tasteless and boringly predictable, it is also a waste of good champagne.
What would be on the menu for your last supper?
Not much, if I knew I was going to die. If I didn’t, then wild smoked salmon and champagne, followed by mussels and chips with a good white burgundy.
Do you have any regrets about becoming a doctor?
None. We have such privileged access to people’s minds, bodies, and lives. Even on the worst days we can at least comfort ourselves that we are doing a little good. What other job offers that?
If you weren’t a doctor what would you be doing instead?
I would probably be a journalist or politician or a not particularly successful businessman. Whatever I was doing, however, I would look enviously at doctors, who were actually able to make a difference.
Notes
Cite this as: BMJ 2014;348:g18