David Reilly, FRCP, MRCGP, HonDSc
I became a doctor in 1978 hoping to combine my head and my heart in helping people. I worked in the UK at NHS for 38 years, mostly as a Consultant Physician in General medicine. On route, I also trained as a GP, and explored other paths to healing, such as evaluated aspects of complementary medicine (including RCTs of homoeopathy) and mind-body medicine and holism.
As a student I had become uneasy with medicine’s inability to stem the rising tide of epidemics of long term conditions and suffering, and I was equally concerned by what I felt to be an emerging de-humanization in health care, something that contemporary patients and staff now widely lament. I committed myself to being part of change. Throughout my career therefore I sought better ways of approaching medicine, health and human caring. This led me to expand my learning from an emphasis on the study of disease and treatments, to now include the study and exploration of the innate healing capacities in people and situations, and the factors that modify these healing responses. In turn this shift brought me to investigate placing this innate capacity at the center of the meeting, the relationship, the therapeutic encounter, and the care-system design. My research over 30 years has shown that such a shift in the core purpose of our work can release remarkable potential for change in people, indeed transformation.
In 2001 my work on this shift towards wellness enhancement learning was posited by The Public Health Institute of Scotland as the core of a needed ‘Fifth Wave’ of Public Health – one that could address contemporary challenges – this was further explored in the www.AfterNow.co.uk project.
Blending my work as clinician, teacher and researcher, I have been directing The Healing Shift Enquiry that explores how knowledge from our direct study of healing process and wellness enhancement might be applied, and scaled up: e.g. in one-to-one relationships, in integrative models of care; in healing environments (www.ghh.info); and in cultural and national development. In 2004 I began to model scaling this learning into group-based programmes – like TheWEL, then the StaffWEL (2010) and then the GuidedWEL (2018) www.thewel.org). The latter allows for extensive spreading of the principles and practices into health care and communities – currently in partnership with the TheWEL Charity and The Community Renewal Charity in deprived areas of Scotland.
I am now old enough to have made major mistakes and young enough to learn from them. Fortunately, I am not as old as used to be, and I am even younger since my daughter Karina Maia was born in 2005.
Dr. David Reilly graduated with commendation as a doctor in 1978 from The University of Glasgow as the top performing student in the final exams. He became a Fellow of The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons and Member of The Royal College of General Practitioners, and in 2013 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science by the University of Westminster. He has won many awards, most recently a finalist in Scotland’s NHS Doctor of the Year, and winner of Change Agent of the Year in Scotland. He is currently the Director of TheWEL Programmes, and The Healing Shift Enquiry, and Founder and Director of TheWEL Charity, and co-director of the WeLWorld enterprise. He has published extensively in international journals.
Formerly he was a Consultant Physician who led the creation of the NHS Centre for Integrative Care in Glasgow; Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board’s Lead Clinician for people with CFS/ME; an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Medicine, Glasgow University; Visiting Professor of Medicine, University of Maryland; faculty member at Harvard Medical School, USA; The Scottish Government’s first National Clinical Lead for Integrative Care.