Professor Tom Solomon CBE FRCP FMedSci has been elected as the RCP’s new academic vice president following a vote by 3,762 of the RCP’s fellows – turnout 27.1%. He will succeed Professor Ramesh Arasaradnam and will take up the post on 1 August 2024 to serve for three years.
Five new councillors have also been elected, which is a change from the usual four roles. This is due to an earlier than planned stand-down of an elected Councillor.
Professor Solomon has been on RCP Council since 2019, and a clinical academic for 25 years. He is professor of neurology at the University of Liverpool, working as a consultant neurologist at the Walton Centre and Liverpool University Hospitals. He is a director of The Pandemic Institute and the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections at the University of Liverpool. Professor Solomon also works to engage wider audiences in science, including two family science shows at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Professor Solomon said: “I am honoured to be elected to represent my clinical colleagues helping to support a thriving research culture across the UK. I do believe, if we can get it right, research and innovation, including med-tech and AI offer many solutions for the challenges that we face in healthcare today.”
The five new councillors will also take up post on 1 August:
Dr Karl Davis is a consultant geriatrician and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Cardiff and the first physician based in the South Wales Major Trauma Unit. He is the chair of the Welsh Branch of the British Geriatric Society, and acted as clinical lead for the 1000Lives+ Community Falls Collaborative throughout its operation, a part of the Prudent Healthcare campaign.
He is the Foundation Program Director for Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan, and has been module lead on the Cardiff University Clinical Geriatrics MSc since 2009.
Dr Davis completed postgraduate training in Tyneside, Teesside and the Midlands before moving to South Wales to complete specialty training. He has worked in community based acute assessment and integrated care teams and was the clinical lead in a local community hospital. He was the first clinical research fellow in the Nottingham University Division of Vascular Medicine based in Derby Royal Infirmary.
Dr Paul Dilworth is a returned retiree whose consultant roles have included respiratory medicine and acute general medical take. He has wide experience of senior educational leadership, both undergraduate and postgraduate, as well as research leading to a DM, many years in clinical lead roles and two years as chair of the Trust consultant staff committee. Dr Dilworth is also Honorary President of the UCL Medical Students organisation RUMS (Royal Free, University College and Middlesex Students).
Dr Cara Hendry is a consultant cardiologist, practising in coronary intervention in Manchester. Her specific interests are in management of patients with cardiogenic shock, resuscitation and treatment of complex patient subsets. She is a previous chair of Women in Cardiology at the British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) where she wrote the guideline on professional conduct, and established the Women in Cardiology session at the annual BCS conference. She is currently the Vice President (Corporate and Finance) of BCS.
Dr Hendry is a national co-director of the Your Heart Hospital programme, which teaches schoolchildren life-saving skills. She takes an active role in education of under and post-graduates and was recently involved in interviewing candidates for internal medicine training, as well as undergraduate medical OSCE examinations.
Dr Claire Pulford is a consultant in General and Geriatric Medicine, and a Regional Adviser (RA) for the RCP. Other RCP contributions include serving as a mentor on the Emerging Women Leaders programme and as an RCP examiner and examination board member. She has previously been a member of the RCP New Consultants Committee and represented them at Council.
Dr Pulford has been involved in educational leadership for more than 20 years, most recently as Director of Medical Education (DME) at Oxford University Hospitals. She has national and regional roles as a GMC Education Associate and as a member of the KSS Deanery Professional Support and Wellbeing Service works to support individual doctors in training. She is also a trained executive coach and mentor, QSIR practitioner and quality coach.
Professor Koottalai Srinivasan is a consultant respiratory physician and Hospital Dean for Keele Medical School at Shrewsbury & Telford Hospitals NHS Trust. He has previously acted as Training Programme Director for Respiratory Medicine for West Midlands Deanery and been a member of the Specialist Advisory committee for Respiratory medicine. In the 'noughties' Dr Srinivasan was a College Tutor for RCP in his trust.