GP WHO GIVES ROUNDTHE-CLOCK CARE
For 23 years, Bournemouth GP Dr Susan WalkerDate has offered the patients at her practice enviable continuity of care.
She’s always prided herself on being an old-fashioned family doctor, one who knows her patients well.
But the mother of five truly goes above and beyond — doing home visits on her days off and during lunch breaks, collecting patients’ prescriptions for them if they’re ill and alone, and sometimes delivering the medicines late at night.
Even while she’s on holiday she’ll ring with test results so, she says, patients aren’t left waiting and ‘worrying’. Her colleagues say she’s often at work before they arrive, and leaves after them.
When Lezzette Hession’s mother Kim was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2015, Dr Walker-Date ‘never made her come into the surgery, she always visited her at home — even if it was after her other rounds had finished’.
‘I’ll never forget that on one occasion as Mum grew weaker, the doctor finished work late at 9pm and then drove to our house. She was such a comfort to my mother in her last weeks, visiting any time we rang. I’ve never known anybody so caring,’ says Lezzette.
All this extra work while also looking after her own family, including her disabled 20-year-old daughter, who has rett syndrome, a rare neurological condition which affects brain development.
For many years Dr Walker-Date, 54, chaired the rett UK Charity, campaigning for specialist clinics, running family weekends for those affected, fundraising and helping write the rett care guidelines.
A report for the Care Quality Commission described her work on rett as ‘outstanding’.
Susan decided to become a doctor aged eight after breaking her leg and watching hospital staff at work — winning a place at grammar school, she became the first in her family to go to university.
To her patients, including Ian Jones, who nominated her, she is a real-life Superwoman.
‘After 25 heart attacks and three strokes, I’m convinced Dr WalkerDate is the reason I’m still here,’ says Ian, a retired schools examinations officer. ‘I don’t know where she gets the incredible energy from. She’s a GP in a million.’