Alison Gibb (MRCGP MFFP)

Name : Alison Gibb (MRCGP MFFP)
Employer : City and Hackney PCT
University : University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Subject : MBChB
Graduated : 1992

After completing my medical degree, I completed two house officer jobs and then went travelling before working abroad in Australia and New Zealand. I did my SHO posts in New Zealand – there was no problem getting these recognised, with the right documentation, for GP training back in the UK. I always planned to be involved in sexual health and so after my MRCGP I became a member of the Faculty of Family Planning, which took about 18 months to complete.

My job

My duties include a mixture of general practice and working in sexual health clinics. I work in a general practice for three days a week – seeing patients, going on home visits and catching up on paperwork. On Tuesdays I run a young person’s clinic in the sexual health department of a hospital, providing contraception and screening. On Wednesdays I hold a family planning community clinic in Stoke Newington, which looks after a totally different sector of the population. I enjoy being able to see healthcare from all angles – it keeps me interested in what I’m doing.

Working in a city

The population in a city is denser so patients are nearer to surgeries, meaning that there are fewer home visits. The needs of patients in inner cities are often different to those in more rural areas – not only do they have medical problems but also quite complex social and financial problems. In Hackney we have a high immigrant population, some of whom arrive with multiple unmet healthcare problems. This makes my job as a general practitioner more holistic and challenging.

Best and worst

I get to see such a wide range of patients with the variety of work I do. It’s quite a unique job and I’m really lucky to have it. The ten-minute consultations can be frustrating as it’s really difficult to address patients’ problems in such a short space of time and to make them feel they’ve been heard.