I feel very lucky and proud about my new job – I’m a learning disability physician with the Hull community team for learning disability, one of only a handful of such roles in the UK.
My role is managing the physical health of people with a learning disability, coordinating care between speciality teams, ensuring the whole person is considered, leading by example and supporting other health professionals to see their patients as individuals with specific strengths and challenges. I’m also an A&E consultant.
Physicians bring expert medical knowledge and skills while learning disability nurses are specialists in person-centred care, communication and advocacy, supporting independence and social inclusion. Both are needed, working collaboratively, to break down barriers to healthcare.
I developed an interest in learning disability because of my daughter, Amy. She has Down syndrome and has taught me that people with a learning disability are more at risk of serious illness than everyone else.
Amy taught me about diagnostic overshadowing, where symptoms are put down to a pre-existing condition so tests and treatments for other conditions are delayed or missed. She helped improve my communication and showed me that reasonable adjustments to help people with disabilities access services are easily achievable and make a huge difference.
Hospital to primary care
Community Living previously reported on the Learning Disabilities Toolkit (Clear contact in emergency care, Spring 2025), which I wrote. The toolkit is the first of its kind for emergency medicine, aiming to ease health inequalities by supporting doctors to treat learning disabled people more appropriately. Although a toolkit existed for hospitals, there was none specifically for emergency departments.
Amy is the inspiration for my work, but I met another inspirational woman in 2019 who also influenced what I do and who was behind the learning disability physician role I have just started.
Back in 2019, Jeanne Carlin told me about her daughter Erica, and how a doctor from the Netherlands, who had received extra training in learning disability, showed her healthcare could be done differently.
I was fascinated and Carlin invited me to a meeting in London to discuss how this role could be introduced in the UK. Several senior doctors and policymakers were present. We talked about designing a course on the medical needs of people with a learning disability and developing the role of learning disability physician.
Amy taught me about diagnostic overshadowing, where symptoms are put down to a pre-existing condition so tests and treatments are missed
Sadly, Carlin died before she saw her plans come to fruition but, in May 2021, the first community learning disability physician in the UK started work – Dr Patrick Naughton-Doe – and his first patient was her daughter.
Next, in 2023, Naughton-Doe and I were in the first cohort of students to study the course mooted all those years ago – the postgraduate certificate in medical needs of adults with learning disability, run by the Royal College of Physicians and Edge Hill University.
It was set up by several experts in the field – Dr Kirsten Lamb, Dr Ken Courtenay and Dr Charly Annesley. The course was co-produced with experts by experience; Sam Prowse and Gavin Howcroft, for example, were wonderful teachers.
It was amazing to be among people with such passion for tackling health inequalities for people with learning disability. The course puts an emphasis is on holistic care, seeing the patient as an individual, coordinating the multidisciplinary team and embedding leadership that strives for cultural change.
Now I teach on that very course and, as Naughton-Doe retired in 2025, was thrilled to be appointed as his replacement. I am still working in A&E so my community team for learning disability role is part time.
I’m looking forward to getting to know my patients and working out how to best support the health of each one. I hope to make a wider difference, too, by showing other doctors that everyone deserves to feel healthy and cared for, no matter their level of understanding or communication.
