Top doc: Dr Gabriel Hendow offers unrivalled care as a GP
Do you know a health hero? We’re asking you to nominate special people in healthcare. Five finalists will receive an all-expenses- paid trip to pick up their awards from the Prime Minister and the winner will also get a £5,000 holiday.
Here, Sheron Boyle talks to one inspiring nominee …
How would you describe the ideal GP? Is it the person you get to see every time you have an appointment — a familiar face rather than another new doctor to whom you have to tell your whole story yet again?
A GP who offers on-the-day appointments? Who does home visits? Who won’t turn away new patients when they move into the area?
What about someone who doesn’t just dish out more pills but takes time to talk about the alternatives — and even offers free cooking classes and exercise sessions? Who has set up a special health clinic which invites all teenagers in the practice for an annual top-to-toe check-up — just one of the innovative schemes he’s introduced to improve his patients’ lives?
How about a GP whose practice has been given the highest rating possible by the official regulator?
Dr Gabriel Hendow is the GP who does all this — and more. At the age of 72, he single-handedly cares for 2,600 patients in his thriving practice in a deprived area of East Yorkshire.
His surgery has recently been rated Overall Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission — the only sole practice in the country to achieve this rating — which found that ‘patients were treated with compassion, dignity and respect’. Dr Hendow is based in the heart of Hull’s Bransholme estate, one of Europe’s largest council estates.
While most sole GPs have about 1,900 patients on their books, Dr Hendow has 700 more than this, and single-handedly treats each one.
‘I keep telling him we can’t take any more new patients, but he just says we can’t turn people away,’ says practice manager Tina Cheyne.
‘Dr Hendow is amazing to staff and patients. He is a father figure to us all.’
What inspires him, and keeps him working well beyond pensionable age, are his patients.
Take the teen health clinic. It was set up four years ago after a 16-year-old girl sat opposite Dr Hendow and tearfully explained she was pregnant — that it was unplanned, unwanted and she was afraid.
Dr Hendow gently explained her options: to have the child or a termination. Then, after she left, he called his team together and told them about her.
‘I felt so sad,’ he says. ‘This girl had her whole life in front of her and should not have been in this position in this day and age. I vowed we’d do something to stop this happening again.’
Together with his small but devoted team of staff, he introduced the teen health clinic, and every one of the 200 young people aged between 13 and 19 on his books is invited to the surgery and given an annual check-up.
‘We also advise about contraception, and I am proud to say that in the four years it’s been running, we’ve not had a single unwanted or unplanned teen pregnancy,’ he says.
Dr Hendow pictured with the patients who nominated him, from left, Jeanette and Noel Till and Practice Manager Tina Cheyne
Dr Hendow, who is married and a father of four, has a mantra — one he has instilled in his eldest son Haytham, now 25 and a trainee doctor.
‘I told him, we graduate as doctors but we spend our whole lives learning to become one. I love my job and my patients, and I learn something new every day,’ he says.
He believes in empowering patients and that pills are not always the answer.
‘I had one consultant who asked me to prescribe slimming tablets for a seriously obese patient before he underwent surgery,’ he recalls.
‘I was angry and said: “No, if you’re so keen on him having the tablets, you prescribe them.” Then I called in the patient and explained he needed to address his weight and take control of it.’
A keen cook himself, in 2014 Dr Hendow set up free cookery classes, as his exhortations for patients to change their lifestyles and ditch microwave meals and takeaways were too often falling on deaf ears.
‘I realised I wasn’t making an impact, so I decided to do something different,’ he explains.
He arranged the cookery lessons to teach patients how to make healthy meals and encourage them to buy local fresh produce — becoming the first GP in the UK to offer patients a food clinic in the practice to tackle obesity.
A private company provided a chef and equipment for free, while the local council funded the food. Dr Hendow himself ‘got discounts by buying from local butchers and greengrocers rather than supermarkets’.
‘Many of my patients did not know the value of home-cooked food,’ he explains. ‘I wanted to teach them that it’s easy to cook a meal in a healthy way and not to be afraid of trying something.
‘Food is important to my family. My children, from the age of ten, cooked for each other at weekends — we made it a fun family event.
‘My mum was an incredible cook and we were brought up learning about the pleasure of it and importance of cooking from fresh ingredients. We grew all our own fruit and veg.
‘Even now, I regularly use my mother’s cookbook, with more than 200 recipes that she garnered from her travels in the Middle East.’
Dr Hendow was one of eight children born to Thomas, a GP, and Victoria, in Basra, Iraq. He trained in Baghdad as a general and orthopaedic surgeon but in the Seventies, the family, who are Catholic, were forced by Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime to flee their homeland.
‘It was a wet evening on Thursday, December 7, 1977, when we escaped to the UK,’ he recalls. ‘I’ll never forget it.’ Dr Hendow, then 32, pretended he was taking a holiday in Europe so he could leave.
Dr Hendow cares for 2,600 patients
‘I never went back.’
He met his future wife, Kirsten, now 57, in Sheffield in 1985 while working in a hospital there. She is now his practice nurse. The couple had triplets — two girls and a boy — and, 18 months later, another son.
‘Family, work and church are my life,’ he says today.
By the time he’d reached his mid-40s, he was finding that surgery alone wasn’t giving him enough job satisfaction. ‘What I really enjoyed doing,’ he explains, ‘was sitting on the edge of a patient’s bed talking to them.
‘I found this communication so important. It’s about finding out about that patient and what I can offer. I knew that this was more than surgery — doing the operation — could offer.’
Ignoring senior medics who said that, at 45, he was too old to retrain, he spent two years working in different UK surgeries and learning to be a GP. Then, at 47, he moved his family from Sheffield and began his work at Bransholme.
He recalls: ‘When I told my dad I was going to be a GP, he said: “That’s wonderful, son, but don’t become a GP — be a family doctor”.
‘I said: “I don’t understand. What do you mean?” He said: “You will know when you become one.” I have never forgotten that — and it is what I strive to be every day.
‘I chat to my patients. I get to know them, their families and what’s going on in their lives — seeing them as a whole person. My work is about how can I help.’
Giving the patients the tools they need to take control is central to his approach. As well as cooking classes, Dr Hendow set up an exercise and dance class at the health centre where the surgery is based.
‘It was to get patients’ joints moving — dancing, working out at a level they could do. It was a great success. Friendship groups were formed and we arranged for them to join gyms at a discount price and buy the stretch bands to do exercises at home.’
auxiliary nurse Jeannette Till and her husband Noel, a warehouse worker, joined both classes. ‘My weight had soared from 14 st to 17 st when I had to stop work due to a back injury,’ says Noel, 65. ‘I also suffered angina and blood pressure problems, and even attempting to put up shelves or walk a few hundred yards was a problem.’
Jeannette, 66, says working shifts and snacking led to her piling on two stone: ‘When I realised I was too fat to play with my grandchildren, I knew we had to do something.’
Dr Hendow called the couple in and asked if they wanted to join the classes. Noel says that thanks to the classes, his cooking skills have improved.
‘We make lots of soups, great frittatas, use different styles of cooking and fresh produce. We also liked the exercise class. Because we weren’t in a gym, surrounded by thin folk, we didn’t feel intimidated.
‘I now comfortably walk up to six miles a day, our blood pressures are normal — and we’ve lost five stone between us.’
Jeannette adds: ‘It would have been easier and probably cheaper in the short term to give us both medication — but Dr Hendow gave us the chance to take back charge of our lives in a dignified and caring manner.’
The GP’s drive to avoid just handing out more pills led to another scheme — One To One — to address mental wellbeing.
Dr Hendow, pictured with Jeanette and Noel Till, is based in the heart of Hull’s Bransholme estate
‘It’s part of the holistic approach I adopt,’ says Dr Hendow. ‘It offers something different, be it help, advice or motivation, as we encourage a person who may be having problems at home or at work to develop the necessary skills or see the right person to help them through the crisis.
‘It can work alongside antidepressants. I refuse to do repeat prescriptions for them anyway. They’re not a solution and only offer the breathing space to stabilise a person while they think a problem through.’ Dr Hendow brought in psychiatric nurse Matt Leathwood, who voluntarily comes to the surgery twice a week to see patients Dr Hendow thinks will benefit from speaking with him.
‘We had one lady who suffered stress and anxiety from work issues and was off sick for four months. Matt helped her tackle the issues through talking therapies and she was able to make a successful return to work.’
Dr Hendow adds that because the practice offers a range of services to help patients, he is not inundated with people needing to see him.
‘Of every ten patients I see, maybe three or four get prescriptions,’ he says. ‘The others we talk to and see what services we can offer that may be more effective.’
As well as being an innovator, Dr Hendow represents the best of old-school doctoring. For instance, the practice has on-the-day appointments, while children who are ill can be brought in that day.
He does home visits to private and nursing homes whenever he is needed — or simply if he’s worried about someone. ‘He visited my friend at home the day after her mother had died,’ says Jeanette. ‘He was so concerned that she was not alone and being looked after.’ His compassion is inspiring — Dr Hendow will sit with families when a loved one is near the end.
‘These people are my patients. I looked after them during their living years — I would not abandon them as they pass away,’ he says.
‘Dying is part of life and I treat it with respect and dignity.’ That includes paying his respects when they’re at the undertakers.
The CQC report noted that care home staff said Dr Hendow ‘was extremely attentive when it came to supporting patients on end-of- life care, in particular patients with a dementia-related condition’.
Dr Hendow says he is happy working as the sole GP. When he goes away, a locum and a neighbouring GP step in to help — though he says he is always at the end of the phone.
Practice manager Tina Cheyne says: ‘We all love working for Dr Hendow — he is a real hero in the community.’
He has no immediate plans to retire: ‘I love my work, why would I give up?’
Tomorrow, his surgery will be open for business at 8 am, as it has been every weekday for the past 25 years. It is, appropriately, in Goodhart Road — it’s hard to think of a more fitting name.
Nominate your health hero
The Daily Mail proudly presents our 2017 Health Hero Awards to honour the men and women in the NHS who work tirelessly for their patients, going the extra mile. We know there are countless such heroes – doctors, nurses, care assistants or hospital porters – and we’d like YOU to help to identify them. It could be a healthcare assistant who takes time to comfort a distressed patient in the lonely hours of the night. Or a GP who won’t leave a stone unturned to provide the best treatment. It might be the hospital volunteer whose arrival lifts the mood on a ward. Or the devoted surgeon, nurse, receptionist or ambulance driver for whom no effort is too great.
To enter, fill in this form and tell us in no more than 400 words – using the box provided – why you think your candidate should win. The closing date is midnight on Friday 1st December 2017. The editor’s decision is final.
There will be a total of five finalists including the winner. Each finalist will receive a paid-for one-night stay in a five-star London hotel, selected by the organisers, and travel to and from London, for them and one guest. The finalists will receive their award from The Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street (subject to security clearance and the Prime Minister’s availability). The prize for the Health Hero of the Year is a voucher for a luxury break up to the value of £5,000 courtesy of leading villa specialists Oliver’s Travels (oliverstravels.com). This is subject to Oliver’s Travels voucher terms. You must obtain consent of your Health hero to submit the entry before entering and submitting the details below. Usual Promotion Rules apply.