Aneez Esmail is Professor of General Practice at the University of Manchester

He was Director of the NIHR Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre http://www.population-health.manchester.ac.uk/primary-care-patient-safety, between 2012-2017. 

Between 2005-2014 he was the Associate Vice President for Social Responsibility and Equality & Diversity and oversaw the development of the equality and social responsibility strategy for the University of Manchester.

As a health services researcher, he has published work in several areas of public health (prevention of cot deaths, epidemiology of solvent abuse, preventing paediatric admissions, the evaluation of telemedicine and patient safety). He has raised over £11 million in research grants, £1.4 million in educational grants and over £300,000 in consultancy fees over the last 25 years. His main research interests are related to patient safety in primary care (delayed decision making and burnout), racism in medicine and the organisations and delivery of primary care. He works collaboratively with researchers from North America, Australasia and Europe.

He worked as the only Medical Advisor to Dame Janet Smith, the Appeal Court judge who chaired the Shipman Inquiry between 2001-2005. He played a key role in developing the recommendations that resulted in significant changes on the reform of the General Medical Council, death certification and investigation, controlled drugs regulation and the regulation and revalidation of doctors.

He is recognised nationally for his research on discrimination in the medical profession. Much of the work that he has carried out in this area has resulted in significant changes in recruitment, selection, monitoring and assessment of the medical profession. This work was recognised internationally with the award of a Harkness Fellowship and Visiting Professorship at Harvard University in 1997. He was offered but declined an OBE for his contribution to primary care and race relations in 2002.

He is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

He continues to practise as a clinician, at the Robert Darbishire Practice, a social enterprise based in one of the most deprived areas of Manchester. It is the largest practice in Manchester with over 22,000 registered patients. The practice has a turnover of over £2.5 million annually and provides an innovative service in relation to same-day access, care of deprived populations and looking after patients with complex health needs. He was commended by the Health Service Journal, as one of the top 100 Clinical Leaders in the NHS in 2014 and received the Lifetime Award for Achievement in General Practice in 2017 from the publishers of Pulse Magazine. 

Details of his work can be found on his personal website http://www.aneezesmail.co.uk

http://www.aneezesmail.co.uk

http://aneezesmail.wordpress.com/

https://twitter.com/aneezesmail

My work on racial discrimination in the medical profession has covered the discrimination faced by ethnic minority doctors from entry into medical school, job applications, differences in remuneration, and assessment in complaints. I am recognized internationally for my research on discrimination in the medical profession. Much of the work that I have carried out in this area has resulted in significant changes in recruitment, selection and monitoring of the medical profession. I have provided advice to ministers, senior civil servants and other professional bodies on matters related to race and diversity. In 2013, I completed a major piece of work on unfairness in postgraduate medical examinations. I helped set up the Workforce Race Equality Standard for the NHS in 2015 and was a member of its strategic advisory board till 2017.

My research on accountability of the medical profession is based on the premise that the medical profession remains largely unaccountable for its practices in relation to how it controls entry into the profession, the way that it allows career progression, handles complaints and rewards its members. Through the exemplar of racism my work has shown that there is a lack of mechanisms for monitoring, a culture of denial and a lack of clearly defined pathways of accountability in the NHS, the professional bodies in medicine, universities and the General Medical Council. The work has a direct bearing on the current debate on how to make the profession more accountable, revalidation and governance. This work has directly led to processes to improve accountability and transparency in the GMC, resulted in my appointment as the Medical Advisor to the Shipman Inquiry which itself produced far-reaching recommendations designed to improve patient safety in the UK.

My research on patient safety started from the premise that issues related to patient safety in primary care are distinct from and require different interventions from those devised for secondary care. We carried out the first study on reporting errors in general practice as part of the Linneaus collaboration and established the principle that general practitioners were willing to report errors and that errors in general practice were significant in relation to the harm that they caused. Our work on the utility of medico-legal databases resulted in changes in the way the medical defence organisations and the NHS Litigation authority handled and processed litigation claims and ensured that systems were developed to encourage learning from the claims databases. Our analysis of these databases highlighted the role that delayed and missed diagnoses play in the genesis of errors in primary care. Our work on safety culture led to the development of the Manchester Patient Safety Framework (MaPSaF), which is widely used in the NHS to improve safety culture and has been translated into five languages. I have worked widely in Europe helping to develop capacity and engagement from clinicians in relation to improving patient safety in primary care. My research on patient safety and on the accountability of doctors was featured in a major Channel 4 documentary Can you Trust your doctor? (Broadcast November 2011).  In 2012 we were awarded the £6.5 million NIHR Translational Research Centre for Patient Safety in Primary Care. I was its inaugural Director having successfully led the bid and remained Director till 2017.

Member of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine

Member of the Royal College of General Practitioners

Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians

Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

LRCP MRCS

PhD