Alastair Donald

John Horder; John Howie

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.

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.