International Health Humanities Network Membership

Rodger Charlton, BA MPhil MD FRCGP FRNZCGP

Professor Rodger Charlton is a Family Physician in the UK, working as a Professor of Primary Care Education at Nottingham Medical School and an Honorary Professor at Swansea College of Medicine. He has a keen interest in both cancer care and end-of-life care and as a practicing primary care physician. A considerable challenge is to recognize a patient who may have what might be defined as suffering ‘spiritual pain’ in addition to physical pain. This is an area of healthcare that is poorly understood and recognized both in palliation at end-of-life and in primary care generally where patients have long term conditions and multiple co-morbidities.

Professor Charlton qualified (MB ChB) from Birmingham, UK, in 1983 and then completed an MPhil thesis in Medical Ethics. Shortly afterwards he became a part-time Lecturer in General Practice at Nottingham University. In 1991-2, he was a visiting fellow at the University of Otago Medical School, New Zealand, researching into the perceived needs of undergraduates in palliative medicine education. This formed the basis of his MD thesis. In 1994 he was appointed Senior Lecturer in Primary Health Care at the Postgraduate School of Medicine, Keele University. In September 2000 he was appointed as senior lecturer in continuing professional development at Warwick University and in January 2003 he became the Director of GP Undergraduate Medical Education at Warwick Medical School and an Associate Clinical Professor. He has completed 6 textbooks including; ) “Primary Palliative Care: Dying, Death & Bereavement in the Community”Radcliffe Medical Press Ltd, Oxford, UK. 2002. He is the Honorary Editor of RCGP Publications.

Professor Charlton has been a GP since 1987 and a GP Trainer since 1998 and a Training Programme Director for GP Registrars at Solihull VTS for five years. In June 2011 he was appointed as a Professor of Medical Education and sub Dean for Community Based Learning at the College of Medicine at Swansea University and was a senior member of the team that helped Swansea to be accredited as Wales’s second medical school. This led to his most recent appointment at Nottingham in August 2012. He remains an active clinician as a GP and has a fellowship of the Royal College of General Practitioners in London and in New Zealand. He received a national bronze clinical excellence award in 2008 in the UK.