Welcome

Phil Banfield, BMA council chair

In this edition of The Doctor magazine we pay tribute to former BMA representative body chair Anthea Mowat – a beloved colleague and friend whose passing has left an enormous hole in the lives of her loved ones and our profession. Anthea dedicated herself to others. She lived by the mantra ‘be kind, be true, be inclusive, do good’. The world would be a much better place if we all delivered on those values. The thoughts of everyone associated with the BMA go to Anthea’s family and friends at this diffi cult time, as they do to all of our colleagues who have lost loved ones.

This magazine prides itself on using investigative journalism to reveal injustice, hold power to account, and to advocate for our profession, our patients and our NHS. The latest piece in our series, Paucity of Esteem , does exactly that, exposing the parlous state of mental health services in this country. It reveals thousands more detentions of the most severely unwell patients under the Mental Health Act in recent years. The first part in this two-part investigation highlights a healthcare system so broken it can often only store unwell people up until they are in absolute crisis. As psychiatrist Andrew Molodynski says, this is a ‘vicious cycle and an unsustainable model’. This has to change.

Also in the August issue of The Doctor we interview Professor Sir Michael Marmot, find out his views on the state of health inequalities across the country and what his prescription for politicians is with an election, and a possible change of government, looming. And we cover the remarkable story of 102-year-old Gladys McGarey, an American GP, who enrolled in an all-female medical school in Philadelphia in 1939 and is still on a mission to improve people’s health all these decades later.

Elsewhere in the magazine, we hear the ‘business case’ for kindness in medicine and inspirational deafb lind medical student Alexandra Adams tells us about her harrowing near-death experiences. Deputy chair of council Emma Runswick also writes on the importance of international medical graduates to our workforce, our NHS and our society; fairness and justice again, something Anthea would be telling us is still unfi nished business.