Skip to main content

Main menu

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers

User menu

  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
British Journal of General Practice
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in
  • Follow bjgp on Twitter
  • Visit bjgp on Facebook
  • Blog
  • Listen to BJGP podcast
  • Subscribe BJGP on YouTube
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
British Journal of General Practice

Advanced Search

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
The Back Pages

Alastair Donald

John Horder and John Howie
British Journal of General Practice 2005; 55 (516): 564-565.
John Horder
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
John Howie
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

Alastair Donald was quite simply one of the truly outstanding GPs of his time — and one about whom no-one ever had an unkind word to say. Brought up above the Leith Mount surgery, from which he was later to become the third of four generations of the Donald family to provide care to the people of Leith and Cramond, Alastair was very much a part of the Edinburgh establishment. Educated at the Edinburgh Academy, he first did an MA at Cambridge returning to Edinburgh to qualify in medicine in 1951, having by then demonstrated his formidable all-round talents.

It is difficult to select from or to prioritise among the many professional roles that filled his life; his many years as a much-loved local GP; his key role over two decades as Regional Adviser establishing postgraduate training in and for general practice in the conservative environment of the medicine of south-east Scotland; his influential time as a national College leader during the heights of the renaissance of general practice from the 1970s onwards; and throughout his career as an internationally involved and respected counsel on general practice matters.

Alastair brought immense clarity of thought to everything he took on. He had the priceless ability to see sensible and practical solutions to difficult problems, to know when the time was right to take action or to wait for a more propitious opportunity, and to keep people on board when others would have lost them. He was a natural leader of teams, and a sensitive and effective chairman of meetings. He combined the ability to delegate efficiently, with ever-present willingness to acknowledge the contributions of others.

Alastair was one of only four to have been both Chairman of College Council, and later President. As Chairman of Council between 1979 and 1982 he revolutionised the way the College structured and organised its business, and what happens at Princes Gate now is still clearly modelled on the visions he had then. His Presidency from 1992 to 1994 followed a year when he covered for the Prince of Wales. In between these roles, he was Chairman of the UK Joint Committee on Postgraduate Training for General Practice as well as holding numerous offices at home and abroad.


Embedded Image

Alastair was a thinker as well as an organiser. His 1985 Mackenzie Lecture showed his ability as a critical analyst of the balance between new knowledge and old skills, and his promotion of the series of Occasional Papers produced during his Chairmanship of Council, on what came to be known as Anticipatory Care, helped bring to fruition the first serious attempt to move general practice from being the largely reactive discipline of the past into the more proactive mode it now offers with increasing effectiveness. In retirement he worked tirelessly to establish a video-record of the early times and personalities whose work shaped the life of general practice in general, and the College in particular.

In later years Alastair bore a series of cruel personal events and failing health with the courage and dignity that has characterised everything he did. He was a gifted sportsman to the end – a truly companionable man to play golf with, and much involved in the work of Cramond Kirk, Rotary, the Edinburgh Academy, and the community around him. He will be greatly missed by a host of those whose lives have been the better for having been looked after by him, having worked with him, or simply having known him.

  • © British Journal of General Practice, 2005.
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

In this issue

British Journal of General Practice: 55 (516)
British Journal of General Practice
Vol. 55, Issue 516
July 2005
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
Download PDF
Article Alerts
Or,
sign in or create an account with your email address
Email Article

Thank you for recommending British Journal of General Practice.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person to whom you are recommending the page knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Alastair Donald
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from British Journal of General Practice
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from British Journal of General Practice.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Alastair Donald
John Horder, John Howie
British Journal of General Practice 2005; 55 (516): 564-565.

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero

Share
Alastair Donald
John Horder, John Howie
British Journal of General Practice 2005; 55 (516): 564-565.
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Jump to section

  • Top
  • Article
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF

More in this TOC Section

The Back Pages

  • What is the collective noun for a group of patients?
  • Development of undergraduate family medicine teaching in China
  • The ethics of listening and responding to patients' narratives: implications for practice
Show more The Back Pages

Appreciation

  • Professor Ian Richardson
  • Cecil Helman: GP, anthropologist, writer, poet, teacher, and internationalist
  • George Godber GCB
Show more Appreciation

Related Articles

Cited By...

Intended for Healthcare Professionals

BJGP Life

BJGP Open

 

@BJGPjournal's Likes on Twitter

 
 

British Journal of General Practice

NAVIGATE

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • All Issues
  • Online First
  • Authors & reviewers

RCGP

  • BJGP for RCGP members
  • BJGP Open
  • RCGP eLearning
  • InnovAiT Journal
  • Jobs and careers

MY ACCOUNT

  • RCGP members' login
  • Subscriber login
  • Activate subscription
  • Terms and conditions

NEWS AND UPDATES

  • About BJGP
  • Alerts
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

AUTHORS & REVIEWERS

  • Submit an article
  • Writing for BJGP: research
  • Writing for BJGP: other sections
  • BJGP editorial process & policies
  • BJGP ethical guidelines
  • Peer review for BJGP

CUSTOMER SERVICES

  • Advertising
  • Contact subscription agent
  • Copyright
  • Librarian information

CONTRIBUTE

  • BJGP Life
  • eLetters
  • Feedback

CONTACT US

BJGP Journal Office
RCGP
30 Euston Square
London NW1 2FB
Tel: +44 (0)20 3188 7400
Email: journal@rcgp.org.uk

British Journal of General Practice is an editorially-independent publication of the Royal College of General Practitioners
© 2022 British Journal of General Practice

Print ISSN: 0960-1643
Online ISSN: 1478-5242