InterviewCAmidst all the massive social
and technological shifts in healthcare , his town and rural practice in Ventnor has managed to retain its strong focus on traditional values , with a close-knit community feeling that comes from having served the same local families for several generations .
In 2015 , the Ventnor Medical Centre won a Practice of the Year Award . We spoke to Dr Coleman about his 35 years at the front line of community health care on the Island . If the young Peter Coleman had stuck to his schoolboy ambition , he might have spent his working life carrying handcuffs , rather than a stethoscope . Like many young lads , he had fancied himself as a policeman – although it wasn ’ t an idea that went down well with family or friends . “ Nobody seemed very impressed with that choice ” he recalls , “ but when I started thinking about being a doctor , well , that certainly seemed to go down a lot better !” Born in Leicester , Peter had moved to the Island at the age of six with his parents , Eric and Barbara , who started up an office supplies company in Newport . He attended Nine Acres and Newport C of E and then progressed to Ryde School , where the idea of going into medicine began to grow on him . It just so happened that a new medical school had been set up in his native city of Leicester , and after A-levels he was accepted there as one of only its second intake of students . “ It was all very new , so an exciting time to be studying there ” he said . “ We got an excellent medical education and a huge amount of experience ”. Initially , Peter had planned to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology – but that was reckoning without the legendary lure of the Isle of Wight , which ended up drawing him back over the Solent . He explained : “ Returning by train from a weekend away , I found myself reading the BMJ ( British Medical Journal ) from cover to cover , and noticed an advert for a GP training scheme on the Island .” By that time he had already started his ob-gyn training , so he was faced with a tough choice . Ultimately he decided he wanted to head back to the Isle of Wight . The choice was made even tougher by the fact that his much-respected Professor of Ob-Gyn had found him a job at Leicester Royal Infirmary , and so was none too pleased . “ He didn ’ t speak to me again until the day I left the department ” he recalls .
Prodigal ’ s return
Leicester ’ s loss proved to be the Island ’ s gain , when Peter began his three years of GP training in various junior doctor posts at the now-defunct Ryde Casualty Hospital and St Mary ’ s Newport , and then as a GP trainee in Ventnor . “ The attraction for me was being able to come back to the Island , and yet still have a great training opportunity ”. “ It was a good medical community to work in ” he says . “ I did have a lot of responsibility for my grade , but we were very well supported , and that made a big difference ”. As he says , he and his fellow trainee doctors of the early to mid-1980s put in similarly long hours – sometimes 100 a week - to those of today ’ s hard-pressed junior doctors , but he added : “ We were much better supported in those days than they are now ”. “ We had the doctors ’ mess where we could take a break and talk to each other , and hospital rooms that we could stay in after a shift . “ Nowadays that ’ s all gone , and exhausted young doctors have to face a journey home after a long shift , or stay in a bedsit ”. Another thing that was different was the fact that when Dr Coleman arrived on the Island in 1982 , at 25 years old and , as he puts it , “ young , free and single ”, he was able to buy a house even on a trainee ’ s salary : something that would almost certainly be way out of the reach of today ’ s junior doctors . He says he was helped by the fact that as a student in Leicester , he ’ d realised it was cheaper to buy a house than to rent one ,
Peter aged 6
“ It certainly means you can forget that old stereotype of the GP who treats a few coughs and colds in the morning and then spends the afternoon on the golf course !”
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