ASH Clinical News ACN_4.10_FULL ISSUE web | Page 18

Pulling Back the Curtain
Angela Thomas, OBE, PhD
In this edition, Angela Thomas, OBE, PhD, talks about defying expectations and
mixing politics and medicine. Dr. Thomas is vice chair of the U.K.’s Commission on
Human Medicines. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh,
where she also is the director of heritage and honorary librarian. Dr. Thomas recently
retired as a consultant pediatric hematologist at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in
Edinburgh, Scotland, and is a former president of the British Society for Haematology.
Dr. Thomas boarding a train, headed off on another adventure.
When did you first realize that
you wanted to be a doctor?
When I was younger, my mum had a
subscription to Woman’s Own magazine.
At the back of each issue, there always
was a column in which people would
pose medical questions and ask for
health advice. That was my favorite part
of the magazine to read each week. I can
recall, very clearly, reading one of the
articles and thinking, “If something like
that ever happens, I really, really want
to know what to do.” Becoming a doctor
would mean I would have the answers.
It was around that time, when I was
12 or 13 years old, that I started thinking
I could have a career as a doctor. How-
ever, I attended a relatively conservative
girls’ school and becoming a doctor
wasn’t the sort of career suggested to
many of us. I can think of only one or
two other girls who had gone on to be-
come doctors, so it wasn’t a natural path
to follow.
One teacher – who I didn’t particu-
larly like – encouraged me to study histo-
ry or music instead, so I adamantly told
her I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. Of
course, I didn’t actually think I wanted to
be a brain surgeon, but, as a 14-year-old
student set on becoming a doctor, I told
her the type of doctor I thought would
shock her most. this issue and recognized that to
understand these issues and create
policies to address them, they had to
listen to the junior doctors around the
country about what they were experi-
encing. We were the ones who could
communicate the importance of these
problems to politicians at the senior
level, who would eventually be able to
effect change.
When I was on the British Medical
Association’s Junior Doctors Commit-
tee, we interacted with several officials,
including Kenneth Clarke, who was the
secretary of state for health at the time.
From those experiences, I saw that as
a physician you can make changes in
the lives of your patients directly, but to
make a step change in how doctors work,
we needed to work with politicians. I was
proud to play a part in that.
I don’t think politics would ulti-
mately have been a good fit for me, and
this is confirmed every year when the
U.K.’s long-running “Veracity Index” is
released. Each year, a research company
asks people about the trustworthiness
of various professions and doctors are
routinely among the most-trusted pro-
fessions, while politicians always fall
somewhere at the bottom of the list.
I love organizing parties, too, so per-
haps that would have been a fun career.
If you had followed her advice
and pursued another career,
what do you think you would
have chosen?
Most of my family were lawyers or bar-
risters, so, I suppose becoming a barris-
ter would have been quite interesting. As
a junior doctor, I participated in quite a
lot of medical politics and I might have
liked to become a politician, as well. What other career accomplishments
are you proud of?
I am happy to have worked in a small
subspecialty within hematology and
to have launched quite a few careers
in this field. Pediatric hematology is a
particularly difficult area to practice in
because treating children with hemato-
logic conditions can be demanding and
distressing. When trainees start their
rotation in pediatric hematology, they
tend to be very anxious. But, by the
end of their six-month rotation, many
admit that they enjoyed it and some of
them choose to convert to specializing
in pediatric hematology. That’s been
heartening to see, because I feel that
we have managed to instill in them the
importance, the excitement, and the
reward of practicing pediatric hematol-
ogy. I take pride in knowing that young
What appealed to you about
politics? And, how did medicine
and politics intersect?
During my training at London’s St. Bar-
tholomew’s Hospital Medical College,
there was great anxiety about the num-
ber of hours junior doctors were work-
ing; people realized the long hours were
not good for us or for patients. Politi-
cians started paying more attention to
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ASH Clinical News
“Chart your own career map; don’t
do what somebody else says
because they think it would be
good for you. If you want to do
something, then go for it.”
August 2018