Content area
Full text
Deborah Gill is thrilled that she is now responsible for the leadership and strategic direction of UCL Medical School-the place where she was once a student herself. She laughs that, at an alumni event, she was told she was probably the person they least expected to hold such a role.
"I was quite a late developer. I blossomed later. I wasn't a brilliant medical student." But she feels that being "pretty average" helps her understand the students' perspective. "I tell students it's OK to be top of the class but it's also OK to be one or two percent over the pass mark. It takes an awful lot of qualities to be a good doctor and not all those are about academic brilliance," she says.
Gill is a moderniser and introduced a new curriculum programme at UCL following her appointment as director in 2014. "It wasn't a very modern programme, we were very teacher centred," she says. "We have now introduced a more integrated programme, learning the right things at the right time from the right person. Early patient exposure and maintaining a patient focus in...