Pamela Ross, 1975

Dr Pamela Ross read Medicine at Clare. She retired as a GP in 2017.

Who was your greatest Clare influence and why?

My greatest influence at Clare was Doctor Gordon Wright, my anatomy supervisor and moral tutor. Doc Wright’s specialist area was neuroanatomy which he taught with great passion and attention to detail. I did not become a brain surgeon! His enthusiasm for medicine and caring nature helped me through the tough times and enabled me to pass my medical tripos and go on to be, I hope, a caring and attentive GP.

Pamela's Story

I arrived at Clare in 1975, fresh from an all-girls school and the first in my family to attend University. I had concerns that I wouldn’t fit in.

This was the 3^rd year that Clare had admitted women and was one of the only three mixed colleges.

I needn’t have worried, I had the most fabulous time. Clare was such a friendly college and I felt accepted and appreciated as a woman and for who I was. Those 3 years shine like a beacon in my life, I made many good friends and met my future husband.

I feel privileged to have studied medicine in such beautiful surroundings and to have been stimulated intellectually by the excellent teaching and small group supervisions. I remember my first day in the dissection room, meeting my dissecting partners who would become friends for life and “my body” who I became very intimate with over that first year. I have an outstanding memory of the impression on his ankles where his sock elastic had been! Although anatomy vivas filled me with dread, my time in the dissecting room was full of laughter and happiness and some learning!

Life as a medical student was hard work with lectures and practicals every day. I still found time to “play” hard as well. I have memories of punting, college discos, formal hall, playing squash in the college ladies squash team and careering around Cambridge on the college bed, made by the engineers, in the bed race. Sadly we didn’t win, I think the bed fell apart!

I did my clinical training at The Middlesex Hospital in London and then joined The Ascot and Windsor GP training scheme. I became a GP partner in 1986. I always wanted to be a GP, I loved the continuity of care that I could offer. It was a privilege to get to know my patients really well sharing with them the ups and downs of their lives supporting them through illness and in some cases death.  I specialised in diabetes care, spurred on by the fact that my husband had developed type 1 diabetes, this involved running the diabetic clinics, initiating insulin and managing the care of both type 1 and type 2 diabetics. I was a GP principal for 23 years retiring in 2017 at age 60. I had a career break in California for 6 years, where I had my daughter, Clare, and my son and happy times camping, skiing, swimming and being a mum.

In retirement I am keeping myself amused and my brain stimulated by doing voluntary work on an NHS medical trials ethics committee. Every medical trial has to be ethically approved, including all the Covid drug and vaccination trials, so this involves lots of detailed reading and writing of reports.

My husband and I both have such fond memories of our time at Clare. We have enjoyed the College reunions and have often come across Doc Wright in the college grounds. He would always remember who we both were, such a remarkable man, such a remarkable place.