Michael Alexander Leary Pringle

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

is a British physician and academic. He is the emeritus professor of

general practice General practice is the name given in various nations, such as the United Kingdom, India, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to the services provided by general practitioners. In some nations, such as the US, similar services may be describe ...

(GP) at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

, a past president of the

Royal College of General Practitioners The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) is the professional body for general (medical) practitioners (GPs/Family Physicians/Primary Care Physicians) in the United Kingdom. The RCGP represents and supports GPs on key issues including l ...

(RCGP), best known for his primary care research on

clinical audit Clinical audit is a process that has been defined as a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and the implementation of change The key component of ...

significant event audit A significant event audit (SEA), also known as significant event analysis, is a method of formally assessing significant events, particularly in primary care in the UK, with a view to improving patient care and services. To be effective, the SEA f ...

revalidation Revalidation is a mechanism used to "affirm or establish the continuing competence" of health practitioners, whilst strengthening and facilitating ethical and professional "commitment to reducing errors, adhering to best practice and improving qua ...

, quality improvement programmes and his contributions to

health informatics Health informatics is the field of science and engineering that aims at developing methods and technologies for the acquisition, processing, and study of patient data, which can come from different sources and modalities, such as electronic hea ...

services and health politics. He is a writer of medicine and fiction, with a number of publications including articles, books, chapters, forewords and guidelines. After completing his training at the Sonning Common Practice in rural

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

, Pringle continued his general practice career at the Collingham Medical Centre, Nottinghamshire, which was one of the first practices to become computerised and where he remained until retirement. He was an advisor to the National Health Service IT programme and strategic director and then chair of the board of PRIMIS, which was contracted by the NHS Information Authority to improve computerisation and data in primary care. He was also an elected member of the

General Medical Council The General Medical Council (GMC) is a public body that maintains the official register of medical practitioners within the United Kingdom. Its chief responsibility is to "protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public" by c ...

(GMC) and deputy chair of UK Biobank.

Early life and education

Mike Pringle was born in May 1950 in

Aylesbury Aylesbury ( ) is the county town of Buckinghamshire, South East England. It is home to the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery, David Tugwell`s house on Watermead and the Waterside Theatre. It is in central Buckinghamshire, midway between High Wy ...

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...

.Mike Pringle,

Curriculum vitae In English, a curriculum vitae (,

, - Michael ("Mike") Alexander Leary PRINGLE (2017) (RCGP Heritage) As a child, he had been inspired by his village family physician. He was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford, and then at Guy's Hospital Medical School, from where he gained his MB BS.

Career in clinical general practice

Pringle's first job was as a registrar at the Sonning Common Practice in rural

, with the then honorary secretary of the RCGP, John Hasler, and with Tom Stewart, as his trainer. In 1979, he became a partner in the Collingham Medical Centre, where he continued to practise, at first full-time and later job-sharing and part-time. This practice was one of the first GP practices to be computerised in the UK. Ten years after first entering general practice training, he was appointed as senior lecturer at the

, and subsequently became professor of general practice at Nottingham. Eventually, his general practice career in the

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

and

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

area would span more than 30 years.

Research

Pringle's research has included primary care informatics, epidemiology, quality of care and health care evaluation. In his 1998 paper, titled "Preventing ischaemic heart disease in one general practice", he demonstrated how the reporting of risk factors for ischaemic heart disease at the Collingham Medical Centre increased with the introduction of a quality improvement programme. Together with Colin Bradley, he is credited with developing and instituting

(SEA) into primary care in the UK. The concept of SEA was established with the help of their "groundbreaking" occasional paper on the topic in 1995. In the same paper, they described its definition as "a process in which individual episodes are analysed, in a systematic and detailed way to ascertain what can be learnt about the overall quality of care, and to indicate changes that might lead to improvements". This early research on SEAs also provided evidence for both its potential and drawbacks. Pringle's view is that "everyone can learn and improve. SEA includes all team members in the pursuit of quality. It is non-judgemental and rigorous".

Health informatics

Pringle's expertise in health informatics led him to be one of several advisors to the NHS IT programme. In addition, he became strategic director of PRIMIS, a business unit of the University of Nottingham, that provides a range of primary care health informatics services to the health sector and research community, which was contracted by the NHS Information Authority to improve computerisation and data in primary care. In 2007, it won the John Perry prize of The Chartered Institute for IT.

Revalidation

In 2000, at the United Kingdom Conference of Regional Advisors (UKCRA conference), Pringle presented his introduction on the future of general practice, where he defined ways of evaluating GPs, including revalidation, accredited professional development, membership by assessment of performance, fellowship by assessment, trainer recognition and higher degrees. In 2003, Donald Irvine, who had previously been president of the GMC, had described that discussions around revalidation in 2000 ran largely well due to the credit of two chairmen, John Chisholm of the BMA's General Practitioner's Committee (GPC) and Pringle of the RCGP. In his 2005 John Fry lecture, titled "Revalidation of doctors: the credibility challenge" and organised by The Nuffield Trust in London on 8 June 2005, he proposed what should be included in revalidation.

Royal College of General Practitioners

Prior to 1989, fellowship of the RCGP was granted by a committee following a decision made on "reputation and achievement". Pringle was one of the first GPs to undertake Fellowship by Assessment and also led its development. Between 1998 and 2001, he was chairman of the RCGP. He became chair of the RCGP Trustee Board from 2009 to 2012 and RCGP revalidation clinical lead from 2008 to 2012. In 2012, taking over from

Iona Heath Iona Caroline Heath is an English medical doctor and writer who was president of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) from 2009 to 2012. Iona retired from medical practice aged 60 years in 2010, She was the only person ever to ha ...

, he became the RCGP's 23rd president, taking up the position in November 2012 for a three-year term. In 2013, as part of the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the RCGP, Pringle addressed an audience with his reflection of past years. He covered the introduction of audit, led by Donald Irvine, the establishment of the internal market and fundholding, the 1990 GP Contract, computerisation and the RCGP's role in the SAS siege of the Iranian Embassy in 1980, when the

SAS SAS or Sas may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''SAS'' (novel series), a French book series by Gérard de Villiers * ''Shimmer and Shine'', an American animated children's television series * Southern All Stars, a Japanese rock ba ...

drilled a hole in the RCGP wall. As the RCGP's president in 2015, Pringle unveiled a

blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...

in honour of

A. J. Cronin Archibald Joseph Cronin (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981), known as A. J. Cronin, was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known novel is ''The Citadel'' (1937), about a Scottish doctor who serves in a Welsh mining village before achievi ...

's life and work.

Other roles

In 2001, he took on the role of co-chair of the NHS Diabetes National Service Framework. He has been an elected member of the GMC, elected deputy chair of UK Biobank in 2005, and was on the board of trustees at

Arthritis Research UK Versus Arthritis is the UK's largest charity dedicated to supporting people with arthritis. It was launched in September 2018, following the legal merger of the two leading arthritis charities in the UK, Arthritis Research UK and Arthritis Care ...

and at the

Picker Institute Harvey Picker (December 8, 1915 – March 22, 2008) was an American businessman, educator, inventor, and philanthropist. He was the founder, along with his wife, Jean, of the Boston-based ''Picker Institute'', whose goal was to promote patien ...

. With his wife Nickie, he is a patron of the charity 'Home Start' in Newark. He is also the chair of the charity 'Change Grow Live', which began with working with ex-offenders. He helps with the primary care development project at the Collingham Healthcare Education Centre (CHEC) and was also a director of

QResearch QResearch is a large consolidated UK database derived from the anonymised health records of over 18 million patients. the data is taken from around 1,000 general practices throughout the UK. Historical records extend back to the early 1990s. T ...

. Upon retiring from practice and the University of Nottingham, he became an emeritus professor of general practice.

Awards and honours

In 1995, at the annual general meeting of the RCGP, Pringle was awarded the John Fry Medal for "outstanding research in primary care by a young member". In 2001 he was appointed a

for services to medicine.

Selected publications

Pringle is the author of a number of articles and books. He has also written fiction.

Articles

"Computer assisted screening: effect on the patient and his consultation"
co-authored with Sally Robins and George Brown, ''

British Medical Journal ''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origi ...

'', 8 June 1985, Vol. 290, No. 6483, pp. 1709–1712.
"Timer: a new objective measure of consultation content and its application to computer assisted consultations"
co-authored with Sally Robins and George Brown, ''British Medical Journal'', 5 July 1986, Vol. 293, No. 6538, pp. 20–2.
"Using computers to take patient histories"
''British Medical Journal'', 17 September 1988.
"Training For Minor Surgery In General Practice During Preregistration Surgical Posts"
co-authored with John Hasler and Paolo De Marco, ''British Medical Journal'', 6 April 1991, Vol. 302, No. 6780, pp. 830–832.
"From theory to practice in general practice audit"
''Quality in Health Care'', 1992;1 Supplement:S12-S14.
"Significant Event Auditing"
co-authored with Colin Bradley, Occasional Paper of the Royal College of General Practitioners (March 1995), Vol. 2, No. 70), pp. 23–5.
"Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners by assessment: attitudes of members and non-members in one faculty area"
co-authored with Maureen Baker, ''British Journal of General Practice'', August 1995, Vol. 45, No. 397, pp. 405–407,
"Primary Care: Opportunities and Threats: Distributing Primary Care Fairly"
co-authored with

, ''British Medical Journal'', 22 February 1997, Vol. 314, No. 7080, pp. 595–597.
"Preventing ischaemic heart disease in one general practice: from one patient, through clinical audit, needs assessment, and commissioning into quality improvement"
''British Medical Journal'' 2 October 1998; 317.
"Revalidation in the United Kingdom: general principles based on experience in general practice"
co-authored with Leslie Southgate, ''British Medical Journal'', Vol. 319 30 October 1999.
"Participating in clinical governance"
''British Medical Journal'', 23 September 2000, Vol. 321, No. 7263, pp. 737–740.
"Significant event auditing"
''Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care'', 12 July 2009, 18:4, pp. 200–202. ,
"Auditing to improve prescribing safety in general practice"
''Prescriber'' August 2011, pp. 8–9.

Books

''Managing Change in Primary Care''
Radcliffe Medical Press, 1991.
''A Guide for New Principals''
co-authored with Jacky Hayden and Andrew Procter,

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 1996.
''Primary Care: Core Values''
Wiley, 1998.
''RCGP AKT: Research, Epidemiology and Statistics''
co-authored with Julian Hick and Ralph Emmerson, Radcliffe Publishing, 2014.
''The Gothic Line''
Mike Pringle, n.d. (fiction)

Guidelines

"Significant Event Audit; A Guidance for Primary Care Teams"
Paul Bowie and Mike Pringle,

National Patient Safety Agency The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) was a special health authority of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. It was established in 2001 to monitor patient safety incidents, including medication and prescribing error reporting, in the ...

, 2008.

Lectures

"John Fry Fellowship Lecture"
paper accompanied the lecture given by Professor Mike Pringle on 8 June 2005, at Cavendish Centre, London.