1974–1991

During the 1950s a number of Birmingham practices began to offer an informal experience of general practice to students in their elective period. Some offered contacts in the evenings or at weekends to students who requested this. The Birmingham LMC was active in encouraging such experiences. In 1966 the Midland faculty of the then College of General Practitioners began to explore the possibility of establishing a formal post in the medical school and Michael Drury, who had recently returned from a Nuffield Fellowship, was offered a part-time post as a lecturer in the department of social medicine by Professor Thomas McKeown. This enabled these elective attachments to be promoted more formally and with clear objectives and assessments.

These became sufficiently well taken up for the Dean, a neurosurgeon Professor Brodie Hughes, to agree that if outside money could be found for four years a part-time post with secretarial help would be established. Money was raised, principally thanks to the activities of two members of the faculty board, Micky Dale and Robin Steel, partly from a private donation and partly from a voluntary levy introduced by all the LMCs in the area. This enabled an appointment committee to be established in 1974 and Michael Drury was duly appointed Clarkson (named after the private donor) senior clinical tutor on a half-time basis. There was considerable discussion about where this post should be based.