The College of Medicine is a United Kingdom based organisation founded in 2010 for patients and healthcare professionals. The College states that it aims to "promote a more politically and professionally transparent, patient centred, and sustainable approach to healthcare, using whatever social or therapeutic approaches are safe, effective, and empowering for patients'.[1]
It argues that a greater focus on compassionate caring is necessary because of the frequency of National Health Service scandals about care, such as the Stafford Hospital scandal.[2]
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Its officers and associates include former senior NHS staff. Its President is Graeme Catto, former President of the General Medical Council, and its officers and advisory council include Nigel Crisp former Chief Executive of the NHS, Muir Gray Chief knowledge officer to the NHS, and Baroness Ilora Finlay a past president of the Royal Society of Medicine[2]
Its Directors are Professor George Lewith, Professor of Health Research at Southampton University, Michael Dixon (doctor), Christine Glover, former head of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and Professor David Peters a Clinical Director at the University of Westminster's School of Life Sciences.[3]
One of the College's Directors Michael Dixon is a former Director of the Prince of Wales' controversial and now defunct Foundation for Integrated Health, which has been criticised for its advocacy and promotion of alternative medicine under its euphemistic pseudonym "integrative medicine." Several commenatators writing in The Guardian and The British Medical Journal, have expressed the opinion that the new organisation is simply a re-branding of the Prince's Foundation,[4][5][6][7][8], describing it as "Hamlet without the Prince".[2]
In support of this connection with Prince Charles, alternative medicine critic and pharmacologist David Colquhoun has argued that the College (originally called "The College of Integrated Health") is extremely well-funded[9] and seemed from the beginning to be very confident of the Prince's support; explicitly describing its mission as "to take forward the vision of HRH the Prince of Wales" in an early presentation.[10]
These claims have been contested by the College.[1]