Prof Robert K. McKinley
Bob McKinley is Professor of Education in General Practice at Keele University School of Medicine
He graduated from Queen’s, Belfast in 1982 having intercalated a BSc. He initially followed a hospital career acquiring the MRCP but then moved to general practice and completed his GP training in 1988. He took a clinical research fellow post in Belfast where he did the basic work on his MD which centred on a RCT of peak flow monitoring of asthma in patients recruited from general practice. He was appointed as a clinical senior lecturer in Leicester in 1989 where he finished his MD in 1992. While in Leicester he was a partner in a large inner city practice. He was appointed professor of education in general practice at Keele in 2007 and continues to practice as a GP one day a week in Stoke on Trent
He has followed a twin track academic career developing his skills as a teacher alongside his research portfolio. His research has had a number of major foci: clinical research focusing on respiratory disease but also including end of life care, chronic pain and varicose ulceration, health services research focusing on out of hours care and on educational evaluation and research. Most of his research has combined quantitative and qualitative methods and reached across professional boundaries. His research now focuses on education and the assessment and enhancement of skills, delivery of undergraduate education in general practice and understanding the processes though which students learn.
He has supervised a number of MD and PhD students from medical and nursing backgrounds. He is/has also been a member of the editorial boards of Primary Care Respiratory Journal, BMC Family Practice, Education for Primary Care and Perspectives in Medical Education. He has been a member of the research committee of Asthma UK and an external assessor for professorial appointments in the UK and Asia.
His motivation for mentoring is to help others avoid the errors he has made in his own career mis-management and to help reduce the need for luck on which his own career progression has depended.