|
After leaving school, and training and working as an officer in the Royal Signals in National Service, Robert went up to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge with the intention of studying music and becoming a professional musician. However, on recognising that he lacked the talent to be either a singer or conductor at a professional level, he decided to become a doctor.
After training at Cambridge University and the Middlesex Hospital in London he entered general practice - by choice because he enjoyed the human contact with patients - and has been happy as a GP ever since.
He built the first National Health Service group practice in the South Kensington area but returned to single handed practice when he recognised that groups of doctors working together tend to move at the pace of the slowest and focus on their areas of disagreement.
After a total of sixteen years in the National Health Service, Robert resigned because he wished to develop his own ideas and clinical services rather than forever follow the dictates of the State
The PROMIS Unit, with its own simple x-ray unit and pathology laboratory and physiotherapy services, pharmacy and range of simple diagnostic equipment, represents an alternative to health centres where the focus is more on social care than clinical investigation. The PROMIS Recovery Centre and PROMIS Counselling Centre and Juvenile Unit and Extended Care Units were built in order to help patients with depressive illness or addictive or compulsive behaviour and who tend to get minimal service from the State despite the fact that they have considerable physical, emotional and social problems. The various PROMIS facilities were designed to treat these patients with respect and dignity and show them how they could get better without the use of pharmaceutical drugs. The centres are run jointly by Robert and his wife Meg and their son Robin: it is very much a family business.
Robert remains earning his living in the PROMIS Unit as a full time general medical practitioner because he enjoys it. He spends absolutely no time whatsoever on committees and is a member of no professional organisations other than the Independent Doctors Forum (a group of like-minded professionals in private practice). His ideas are spread through his contacts with the media and through publication of his books.
The various PROMIS establishments employ a total of over one hundred staff. Although they are lead by practical example from Robert and Meg and Robin, the staff themselves deserve the credit for much of the care that is actually given on a day-to-day basis and for making PROMIS what it is. Staff are selected and retained on talent and no other consideration whatever other than personal compatibility. This results in clinical thoroughness allied to a family atmosphere throughout all of PROMIS. By remaining independent we shape our own destiny and we work happily together on our own terms for the benefit of our patients.
|
|
Meg trained as a physiotherapist at Guy's Hospital in London and subsequently trained as a medical laboratory scientist at Paddington College and the Royal Free Hospital. She also trained as a Montessori teacher and gained a Bachelor of Education degree from London University. For her work at the PROMIS Recovery Centre, she trained as a Rogerian person-centred counsellor and she also attained a certificated in counselling registered with the Associated Examining Board. As Meg has said, "Every one of Robert's new ideas involves me in more work!"
The first love of Meg's life was also music (she still plays the piano in a trio with her violinist sister and a cellist friend). She and Robert met in their first year of university and they have been equally involved in building and running all the PROMIS facilities. Their son Robin already runs the day-to-day services of all the PROMIS enterprises other than the medical practice, which is planned to be taken over by other members of the family in due course.
Robert and Meg share a wide range of personal interests, primarily opera, ballet, music in general, literature and theatre. Robert has a particular interest in antiquarian books and medieval manuscripts.
Robert and Meg spend all their working lives and most of their leisure activities together. Working together has drawn them closer.
The original ideas of a Problem Oriented Medical Information System (PROMIS) came from Professor Lawrence Weed of the University of Vermont. PROMIS puts patients at the centre of their own care. The problem oriented medical gives details of the patient's presenting statement, the doctor's findings, his or her clinical assessment, the further plans, including investigations and treatments, and the information and recommendations given to patients. Records that are structured in this manner are easy to analyse so that computer analysis enables individual patients, and groups of patients with particular clinical conditions, to be followed up as the years progress and as new ideas and new treatments come to the fore.
All the PROMIS establishments are fully private. They are financed entirely through patient fees. All PROMIS facilities are totally dependent upon patients paying these fees as a result of being satisfied with the services that they have received and then subsequently recommending PROMIS to their friends. For PROMIS to survive and flourish, we have always depended upon the continuing good will of our patients rather than upon allocations from the State or underpinning by private medical insurance companies. PROMIS is independent and has every intention of remaining so in order to guarantee personal, confidential and responsible clinical care for patients. |
|
|
