Past, Present and FUTURE Cam Bowie talks to Seth Dellow By Fergus Byrne
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n the early stages of his medical career, Cameron (Cam) Bowie, was involved in helping develop the use of ‘evidence-based medicine’. In an in-depth audio interview with Seth Dellow, available on our website, he described medicine before that approach as ‘pretty laissez faire’. At that time he was trying to help doctors and public health bodies base their work ‘not on prejudice or what we think works, but actually what the evidence shows’. To most people that would seem obvious, but as has been brought home to us in the current pandemic, medicine, along with public health is an ever-evolving process. As viruses develop and mutate or mental health issues arise from new environmental changes, doctors and health professionals have had to become agile and learn at speed from the evidence around them. Growing up with a mentally and physically disabled brother, Cam Bowie learned about disability from a young age and was naturally drawn to medicine and care. He remembers becoming quite good at wheelchair movement and not getting embarrassed when his brother made strange movements. ‘It was very formative’ he says ‘and the way that I’ve looked at life ever since is obviously realising we’re all different and some people have more difficulties than others in living.’ He studied at St Thomas’s Hospital in London and when he married his wife Claire they bought a Land Rover and traveled around the world for two years working in Nepal
12 The Marshwood Vale Magazine October 2021 Tel. 01308 423031
