| Derek Doyle [Interview One] |
 Despite originally wanting a career in naval architecture, a religious impulse to relieve the suffering of the underprivileged
turned Derek Doyle towards medicine during his sixth form years. At university he began to envisage a life on the mission
field, and after various junior house jobs, Derek Doyle was sent to South Africa by the Scottish Mission with his similarly
inclined teacher wife. In South Africa, Derek Doyle specialised in general and chest medicine. He found many of his patients
were ‘incurables’, and developed a penchant for initiating new projects. After ten years in South Africa, the Doyles were
advised to return to Britain when their second child was in need of specialist health care, and they settled in Edinburgh
in 1966. Derek Doyle then turned to general practice, and after a year combined this with a part-time consultantship at Corstophine
and Beech Mount Hospital, where, in 1968, Matron, Miss Ann Weatherall, badgered him to help form a founding committee to plan
a hospice for Edinburgh. St Columba’s Hospice finally opened in 1977, and, as Medical Director of Scotland’s ‘first’ hospice,
Derek Doyle applied his ‘missionary zeal’, not only to the development of clinical services, but also to the research and
education initiatives which would facilitate the entry of hospice philosophy into mainstream medicine. By the mid 1980s Derek
Doyle’s reputation as a national player in the field of palliative care was established. His interviews recount his involvement
with: the journal, Palliative Medicine; The Association for Palliative Medicine; and the establishment of the Specialty in
1987.
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| Interview conducted by David Clark, 28 December 1995 |
| Interview Duration: 1 hour, 5 minutes |
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