A wind of change from the west

Why would anyone agree to undertake something as arduous as setting up a new medical school? One person who can answer that is John Tooke, professor of vascular medicine at the University of Exeter. He admits that bidding to create a new institution while remaining active in research and clinical practice has proved a substantial challenge. The reward, of course, has been success—for Tooke and for the universities of Exeter and Plymouth. The Peninsula Medical School, with Tooke as its dean, opened in 2002 and will hatch its first graduates this summer.

“By the time we'd won the bid I was hooked,” he says. “I could see this was a fantastic privilege.” He mourns the loss of time spent practising medicine but otherwise has no regrets. His original motive for becoming a doctor was to generate what he calls “health gain”; he's still doing so, but institutionally rather than individually.