Obituary
Dr Stuart Wood
1950-2006
Dr Stuart Wood, one of Glasgow's most experienced general practitioners, and a senior lecturer in general practice at the University of Glasgow for over 20 years, died suddenly at the age of 56.
After school at Jordanhill, he graduated in medicine at Glasgow in 1973 and joined a three partner general practice in Dumbarton Road in 1976, where he remained in practice for 30 years. From the outset of his career, he was involved in academic activities, joining the small team of academic general practitioners, including David Hannay, John McKay and Stuart Murray, which had been assembled at Glasgow University by Professor Hamish Barber in the mid-1970s. This was an unusual career step at the time. His MD in 1984 was the first obtained by a Glasgow general practitioner in modern times. He was active as a GP trainer and was elected Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners in 1986.
He had three research careers, and published over 50 scientific papers, beginning with his doctoral studies of allergic rhinitis, a subject on which he remained an authority, and was frequently consulted by colleagues, health organisations and Government. During the 1990s, he co-led a series of studies of chronic ill health in adolescents, with the late Professor William Parry Jones. More recently, he was co-investigator with Professor Neil Thomson on a series of internationally-recognised community-based asthma trials, involving the largest clinical trial ever carried out in the west of Scotland without drug company funding. The resulting network of practices taking part in research has become a valuable resource for medical research in the west of Scotland.
He was well known, and one of the few general practitioners to take part in international scientific meetings on respiratory disease. He was also clinical adviser for research studies carried out by the Medical Research Council research units for Hearing Studies and for Social and Public Health Sciences. One of his research studies with the MRC attracted national attention for its findings on "Someone to talk to? The role of loneliness as a factor in the frequency of GP consultations", as did a paper on "Non-compliance amongst adolescents with asthma: listening to what they tell us about self-management." He was currently involved in a very important randomised controlled trial of installing heat exchangers in the lofts of households with children suffering from asthma, mainly in Lanarkshire, to test their effectiveness in reducing exposure to house dust mite and providing relief from asthma symptoms.
He was one of the team that pioneered the ground-breaking new undergraduate medical curriculum at the University of Glasgow, in which lectures were largely abandoned in favour of problem-based learning, where groups of students organise their learning around a series of practical scenarios, based on real people in real situations. At the time of his death, Stuart was co-ordinating, for the tenth time, ten weeks of the first year of the course in which students encounter two fictional families, "the Johnstones" and "the McIntyres", living in contrasting circumstances in the west of Glasgow. His 30 years' knowledge and experience of a general practice of 4800 Glasgow patients equipped him perfectly for this leadership role. He was particularly keen to expose students to leading doctors, inviting such luminaries as Harry Burns, formerly Director of Public Health in Glasgow and now Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, to address the students, and to carry on the Glasgow University tradition of the most senior academics teaching the most junior students.
For 15 years, he chaired the Faculty of Medicine Student Electives Committee, and oversaw more than 7000 placements for medical students, as they pursued their studies in elective projects all round the world.
He was a proud and loyal servant of his department, University, profession and city. Few things gave him greater pleasure than to play host, in the background, to a company of friends, colleagues and visitors. His idea of a pre-dinner drink for visitors to the west of Scotland was to serve wine on the after deck of a Loch Lomond cruiseboat, en route from Balloch to Luss, casually picking up a piper from Inchcailleach on the way.
His life was cut short, in the cruellest way for his family and friends, but he will be remembered with great affection, as a lovely man with simple virtues and an irreverent sense of humour, who contributed enormously to the lives of his patients, students, colleagues and friends.
He is survived by his wife Valerie, daughters Deborah, Caroline and Sarah, and by his mother.
Graham Watt and Jill Morrison
March 2006