Women and medicine: Leadership for the future of the NHS

Having first trained in psychiatry at the Maudsely Hospital, Dr Clare Gerada followed her father’s footsteps and became a general practitioner, working in her practice in South London for more than thirty years. Over this time, alongside her clinical practice, she has held several national leadership positions including in 2010, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, only the second women in its 55-year history to hold this position. She has led the way in reforming how drug users are managed in general practice and was awarded an MBE for her services to medicine and substance misuse in the 2000 Birthday honours.

Since she has also led the development of a service for doctors and dentists with mental health problems, establishing and leading NHS Practitioner Health since 2008. This has been, not only a world first, but massively impactful, particularly on young doctors and consequently on the patients they look after and the teams in which they work. The service was awarded Outstanding by CQC rating in March 2019. Currently Clare not only still leads NHS Practitioner Health but has, in 2020 established a service for problem gamblers; Chairs the newly formed registered charity, Doctors in Distress, is co-chair of the NHS Assembly.

In 2020 she was made a Dame in the Queen’s birthday honours, making her, we believe, the first Maltese woman to receive this honour. In November 2021 she became the President of the RCGP (only the second women to hold both Chair and President of the College in its 70 year history). She is a highly respected NHS professional, whose views are listened to by NHS professionals and patients alike.

Dr Amrit Sachar has been a liaison psychiatry consultant in West London NHS Trust and Imperial College NHS Trust for 17 years where she is a Freedom to Speak Up Champion and Diversity Champion. She is working in her trust as Lead for Improvement in Medical Workforce Race Equality Standards (MWRES).

She is a strong proponent for equality action plans to be co-produced with people with lived experience.

She is an elected member of the Executive in the Faculty of Liaison Psychiatry and is an Equality Champion in the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She is a member of the College’s Tackling Racism In The Workplace (TRIW) Committee, working with the College Registrar and the Presidential Co-Leads for Equality to deliver a guidance document for employer organisations to support race equality.

Amrit is campaigning in her trust, at the Royal College of Psychiatrist and in other areas for equal representation on boards, leadership teams, and on professional resources and conferences.

Emeritus Professor Averil Mansfield CBE ChM FRCS FRCP is a retired vascular surgeon and the first British woman to be appointed a professor of surgery in 1993.

Professor Mansfield was born in 1937 in Blackpool. She wanted to become a surgeon from the age of eight, after being inspired by a children's book about advances in surgery. She qualified from the University of Liverpool School of Medicine in 1960.
Mansfield began her career at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and became a consultant vascular surgeon there in 1972 and later a lecturer in surgery at the University of Liverpool. She moved to London and was appointed as a consultant vascular surgeon at St Mary's Hospital in 1982 until retiring in 2002 and an honorary consultant in paediatric and vascular surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital. She was an honorary senior lecturer at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, which merged with the Imperial College School of Medicine in 1988.
Mansfield was Vice-President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

In 1991, she founded and chaired the Women in Surgical Training initiative at the College, which encourages more women to become surgeons and is now WinS (Women in Surgery). She was appointed a CBE in 1999 for services to surgery and women in medicine. She was an invited expert in the 2021 ‘Kennedy report’ about diversity in surgery and the College.
Mansfield retired from surgery in 2002. She was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2005 and was elected president of the British Medical Association in 2009–2010. In 2012 she was voted one of "100 Women Who Have Changed the World" by The Independent on Sunday. In May 2018, she was given an NHS Heroes Award.

Dr Helen Bevan is the Strategic Advisor with the Horizons team, a group of internal change agents within the English National Health Service. Helen has been a leader of large scale change, improvement activist, thought leader and innovator within the NHS for nearly 30 years. She acts as an advisor and teacher to leaders of health and healthcare in many other countries.  

Helen’s focus is on approaches that mobilise and build energy and commitment to change on a very large scale. She works at the interface between the formal and informal system. Helen has an ability to connect directly with thousands of frontline staff and patient leaders. She’s one of the top social influencers in healthcare leadership globally, reaching more than a million people each month through her social media connections, virtual presentations, commentaries and blogs. 

Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon in Eastbourne, since 2002. President-elect of the Medical Women’s Federation (MWF). Honorary Clinical Professor at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Deputy Director at the Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC www.cpoc.org.uk). Previously a Council member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 2011-2021 (the ninth woman). Has an MBA in Health Service Management and MA in Clinical Education. Scarlett won awards for developing the new role of “Doctors’ Assistants”, a Band 3 support worker role, taking the pressure off doctors.

Scarlett has led on changing culture, education, exercise and empowerment. She was lead author for the Academy report ‘Exercise the miracle cure’ and extensive information at: www.rcseng.ac.uk/study. She writes and speaks on the NHS, health, leadership, team-working, exercise, reducing complications, perioperative care, bias, bullying and life; much available from: www.scarlettmcnally.co.uk, including the new commissioned report: ‘What should we call Junior Doctors?’

Scarlett has four adult children, 3 electric-cycles and a 4th Dan black belt in Karate. She developed Myeloma with cardiac amyloidosis in 2018, had a stem cell transplant in 2020 and now works part-time. Publications are on: www.scarlettmcnally.co.uk and ideas on Twitter @scarlettmcnally

Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones OBE is a medical doctor and neuroscience researcher working as Consultant psychiatrist in Addictions leading two national clinics in the UK. Holds the position of National Clinical Advisor on Gambling Harms. She was appointed Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 New Year’s Honours for Services to Addiction Treatment and to Research.
Vice President of the Royal Society of Medicine Oct 2022-2025. Immediate Past President of Psychiatry, Royal Society of Medicine 2020-2022. Chair of the Royal Society of Medicine Education Committee. Past President, Medical Women’s Federation 2017-2019. Honorary Professor, PALS, Faculty of Brain Sciences, UCL.

National Expert Clinical Advisor to NHS England on Gambling Harm since September 2022. Senior Visiting Research Fellow, Dept of Psychiatry, Cambridge University. Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Spokesperson on Behavioural Addictions. Psychiatrist of the Year 2020 Award, Royal College of Psychiatrists. Elected member of Board of Science Committee, British Medical Association. Member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Expert Group on Gaming Disorders. Member of the Howard League Commission on Crime and Gambling Harm
Founder and Director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, UK. 2008 – ongoing. Founder and Director of the National Centre for Gaming Disorders, UK 2019- ongoing. Regular expert advisor to both Westminster and the House of Lords on matters pertaining to gambling disorder, gaming disorder and mental health. Distinguished Fellow, International Society of Addiction Medicine. Founder and joint Chair of the National UK Research Network for Behavioural Addictions ( NUK-BA) based at Cambridge University. Trained in Psychiatry on Charing Cross Senior House Officer Rotation in Psychiatry followed by Charing Cross and St Mary’s Specialist Registrar Psychiatry Rotation.
Doctorate in Medicine in the field of Neuroscience from Imperial College awarded in 2008 Thesis on “Prefrontal Cortex Impairment as Indicator of early Relapse in Alcohol Dependency”. Recipient of many national and international prizes and awards.