After a four decade career working both as a doctor and an educationalist, the Jersey-native is closing in on a well-deserved retirement. The Foundation Dean of the School of Medicine at Magee, however, won’t be setting aside her stethoscope and mortarboard just yet. Advertisement Advertisement Did you know with an ad-lite subscription to Derry Journal, you get 70% fewer ads while viewing the news that matters to you.
First, she intends skippering the inaugural cohort of doctors through to graduation from the School of Medicine next July. Upon which, she will be up for fresh challenges, she tells us. "You know what, I actually want to go on a good sailing trip.
That's one of my ambitions. I haven't done a long sailing trip for a lot of years and I'd quite like that. "I can’t see myself just sitting down and reading books.
I think if people come to me with projects...
I'm very open to projects and challenges.” Advertisement Advertisement Professor Dubras was speaking to the ‘Journal’ after confirming she will be retiring after the graduation ceremony and valedictories in 2025. “It's still 11 months away but it's really important to take some time to do the succession planning.
It's marking the milestone of the final year of the first group that started so it's come at a good time to be doing that.” Dr. Dubras moved to Derry in June 2018 after being appointed Foundation Dean of the new Medical School.
Previously she had worked as Deputy Dean of Medical Education at the GKT School of Medical Education at King’s College London. After much toing-and-froing over business cases that led to delays at a time when Stormont was in cold storage in the late 2010s the School finally welcomed its first influx of 70 students in September 2021. Advertisement Advertisement It was a momentous occasion but took place at the most extraordinary of times for society and the medical profession.
"It's been a journey. There were probably parts that I could have anticipated but there were a whole load of things that I really couldn't have and the pandemic was certainly one of them. It changed that first day and those first months.
"We couldn't even have everyone together to celebrate, just being there, everyone had to wear masks and be socially distanced,” she says. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic Dr. Dubras was also working as a part-time GP at the Abbey Medical Practice in the Bogside.
Advertisement Advertisement She knew first hand the pressures local doctors were under and what the aspiring doctors at the GEMS were facing. " Students were going out on their first placements into General Practice and as a GP myself it felt like GPs surgeries were under siege. "They were working so hard.
Credit to my clinical colleagues. Despite all of the pressure that they were under to deliver care to their patients they still took our students and gave our students an amazing experience. "At one level I think that was good for them, to have some hope in the midst of all that bleakness that was COVID.
My goodness it made it tougher than anybody might have expected.” Advertisement Advertisement Prof. Dubras believes the experience of coping with the worst global pandemic in over a century means the class of 2021 will be well-equipped to deal with anything the world might throw at them when they join the medical workforce as junior doctors next year.
"These are people who really, really wanted to do this. They have seen how the world is. I suppose if something else happens, if there is some other global pandemic, I don't think it will scare them perhaps in the way it has done my generation and junior doctors who were having to work through it.
We never want anything like this to happen but at least they have seen it.” The Channel Islander is a firm believer that the medical school will help address workforce shortages in the local health system. Her vision, she says, has always been to train ‘locally focused but globally ambitious doctors’.
Advertisement Advertisement “That's really important because actually, to some extent, we do want people to be able to go away and broaden their horizons and then bring it back. "If you train somebody and all they do is stay local, forever, you don't get that global experience that we need here in order to improve. "We've got to recognise that what we are going to do is excellent but then we want more.
We want more excellence. "There is really good evidence that doctors stay close to where they train. We anticipate that they will graduate and they will do their first years of junior doctor training here locally.
They will be in our workforce by this time next year,” forecasts Dr. Dubras Advertisement Advertisement Not all specialist training can be provided locally, however, and it is likely some doctors will do some of that in other parts of Ireland and in Britain. Others may travel to the US or elsewhere on fellowships to enhance their skills.
“What we anticipate is that they will come back here because this is their home and the reason this is their home is because they have been welcomed and supported by general practice, by hospitals, around the region. "And when they have had a good experience and they have seen what is needed I think the temptation to come back will be strong.” Having been based in Derry for six years now Prof.
Dubras has been charmed by the city and surrounding area and understands the draw of the north west. Advertisement Advertisement "I was working in London and London is a very exciting place. I was working at a huge medical school and it was great on one level but you know what? The quality of life here is fantastic and I've been so welcomed into this community.
"I was working as a GP in the Bogside until the middle of June and that was brilliant. I loved working with those patients, loved working with those colleagues. But also socially, I've been welcomed by so many people and I wouldn't have had that in London.
” Asked about the challenges facing the local health service at present Prof. Dubras suggests they are much the same as those faced by primary and secondary health care providers and governments across the world. "There is a global shortage of health care professionals, whether that is doctors, nurses, pharmacists, pretty much across every profession.
And I think we also have to recognise that there is not an endless supply of money to feed into the system. Advertisement Advertisement "I am now and always have been a firm advocate for the NHS – the model of the NHS where you have universal health care free at the point of delivery is something which is an essential part of our social structure. "I think we do have to work smarter.
I think we do have to make better use of our multi-disciplinary teams. I think we need to realise that we can't deliver everything everywhere.” Dr.
Rafael Bengoa’s 2016 ‘Systems, not structures: Changing Health and Social Care’ that made a series of recommendations aimed at modernising the health care system in the North and putting it on a sustainable footing would be a starting point, she believes. “There were recommendations through Bengoa which were planned. They were evidence-based and I actually believe if we in NI work in a planned, pro-active way to deliver what Bengoa recommended I think that would place us on a stronger path.
” Advertisement Advertisement The Medical School at Magee is already playing an important role in addressing workforce challenges by training doctors to work in the NHS. Prof. Dubras is convinced the multi-disciplinary backgrounds of the current student doctors will ultimately lead to creative solutions to some of the problems the health service faces in the future.
“It's a very different workforce that we will ultimately see down the line because the people coming into the GEMS are people with backgrounds in engineering, human resources, law and education and when you bring those people in it is more likely they are going to take a different view of medicine and actually come up with creative solutions. "If we just continue to look at health care through the lens that we've always looked at it through we will only see one set of solutions and I think if you enable people to look at things differently and with a different skillset, actually, they may come up with solutions that are different and better.” Advertisement Advertisement Although she still has nearly a year left before she hands over to her successor at Magee, Prof.
Dubras is already starting to get her head around the notion of retirement after all these years. “I literally just had my last session at Abbey Medical Centre in June. It's a wrench.
I've been a doctor for 39 years and in one way you'd say I'm working towards that end point to my career but it takes a bit of planning and adjustment. "I felt very privileged to work here clinically. There is something incredible about working as a GP where you are,” she says.
And while sailing off into the sunset may be an option after she signs off next July you definitely won’t be seeing her sailing up the Foyle in a round-the-world racing yacht. Been there, done that, she confides. Advertisement Advertisement "No and I'll tell you why.
Thirty years ago I was the doctor on a yacht crew and sailed on a racing yacht. I've done two Atlantic crossings and know what it's like to be on a boat that feels like you are in cold wash in a washing machine so I don't need to do that again. There are other options that are available.
A bit more luxury perhaps.”.
