Dr
Patricia Macnair
Specialised areas:
Old Age Medicine
Medical Ethics & Medical Law
Pain management
Genetics
Current positions:
Trust Practitioner, Care of the Elderly, Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford
Freelance Medical Journalist
Advisory Committee member, Progress Educational Trust
Profile:
After qualifying as a doctor in 1982 Trisha worked for a number of years in a variety of hospital specialities (including general medicine, respiratory medicine and anaesthetics) before rekindling an early interest in writing and moving into medical journalism. She worked as a freelance journalist for over 15 years and now, as her children are growing up, has returned to clinical medicine in the field of Care of the Elderly. She currently divides her working week equally between clinical duties and journalism.
She is married to Duncan, a Dental Surgeon, and has 2 children. Interests include playing the guitar, tennis, textile art and gardening.
Media work:
- Reporter/presenter for the BBC Radio Science Unit for 15 years on a variety of health programmes for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service (for example, current/recent programmes include reporter for “Casenotes” and presenter of “The Expert Patient” on Radio 4.)
- Contributions to programmes on many other radio networks, especially Radio 5 Live, on a regular basis.
- Health correspondent for BBCi (Online) Health, with editorial, campaign and weekly feature writing duties as well as writing responses to viewers’ health questions.
- A series of books on the human body for children age 7-11, published Spring 2005 (Bodyscope, Kingfisher Publications) and now working on another series.
- Occasional features and other articles for a variety of national magazines and newspapers.
-
Research/writing/scripting/medical consultancy for published materials
(newsletters, conference reports, CD-Rom, information leaflets) and
video/audiovisual materials, for professional and general audiences. Recent
examples include
- Writing activity packs for the “Jeans for Genes” schools genetics campaign, 2004.
- Updating the Progress Trust Guide to genetics, 2004
- Writing an overnight newspaper for the World Institute of Pain’s Congresses, Sept 2004 in Barcelona, Sept 2003 in Prague.
- Writing educational CD programmes for primary healthcare professionals on the management of pain, for a pharmaceutical company sponsor
- Media training and consultancy, including campaign and crisis management. e.g. for Norwich Union Healthcare, Progress Educational Trust, Arla Foods/Lactofree.
- Medical consultancy/spokesperson for PR campaigns, e.g. for the National Blood Service’s recent radio campaigns, BBC Radio2 ‘s Infertility campaign.
- Trisha has also worked on a variety of TV programmes as the medical “expert”, including “After 5” with Caron Keating on London ITV, Open House with Gloria Hunniford on Channel 5, and The Really Useful Show BBC 1.