Inaugural prize for clinical medicine announced

26 June 2020

At Hertford, we’re awarding a new annual prize for achievement during the clinical part of the 6-year A100 Medicine course. It will be given to the best-performing clinical student in memory of our legendary tutor in Medicine, Professor Miles Vaughan Williams. Mr Simon Brewster, Co-ordinating Tutor for Clinical Medicine, tells us more about the man and the new prize named in his honour.

 

Professor Miles Vaughan Williams (1918 – 2016) was a cardiac pharmacologist and academic. He was best known for the Vaughan Williams classification of anti-arrhythmic drugs. Born in India, a relative of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, he studied Philosophy & Classics at Oxford. He became an ambulance driver during World War Two. Upon his return to Oxford, he switched to study Medicine. From 1955 to 1985, he was a Fellow of Hertford College and tutor in Medicine.

During his tenure, Miles (affectionately known to the students as VW) taught generations of medical students and laboratory scientists. Apart from his teaching and research, major contributions to the college included improvements to the fabric of the building and the design of the Holywell Quadrangle. He used donations from pharmaceutical companies to provide travel funds and bi-annual educational events for medical students at the college. He attended and spoke at these events until 2015. The investments he made continue to support Hertford college medical students to the present day, under the jurisdiction of the current medical tutors led by Professor David Greaves and myself.

2020 is the first year we are awarding a prize to the best performing clinical student at Hertford, in Miles’s memory. We are sure he would have approved! The prize will consist of a certificate and a modest sum of money. Application for the “Hertford College VW Clinical Medicine Prize” is open to students in their final (sixth) year at the college, scored on evidence of achievements during years 4-6 presented in seven domains, by a panel of clinical tutors. Domains include teaching experience, training in teaching, presentations, publications, quality improvement initiatives, positions of leadership and commitment to a medical career or speciality (including medical school examination merits & prizes).

For the inaugural Hertford College VW Clinical Medicine Prize, there were three truly excellent applications. The winner was Dr Chloe Jacklin (pictured above), followed closely in second place by Dr Ifan Jenkin and in third place Dr Aditi Aggarwal. Congratulations to Chloe. I want to say how impressed we were with the quality of all three applications; they would already score competitively at national core medical/surgical trainee interview level. Sadly the presentation originally planned during the Schools Dinner this month cannot take place due to Covid-19.

We wish very good luck to all seven of our newly-qualified doctors heading into their professional careers and look forward to resuming bedside clinical tutorials for everyone else when permitted.

Mr Simon Brewster Bsc MD FRCS (Urol.), Consultant Urological Surgeon

on behalf of the Hertford College tutors in Medicine.