When Tom Dolphin was at his state secondary school, he found it hard to accept that students – particularly those in the sixth form – didn’t have a voice.

Taking matters into his own hands, he organised the students and together they demanded to have an outlet for their experiences and complaints.

A decade later, Dr Dolphin returned to the school for a 10-year reunion with around 60 former students and bumped into one of the teachers who was still working there.

‘Ah, Tom Dolphin,’ the teacher said. ‘Your sixth-form council – it’s still going and it’s a pain in the backside, it really is. You know what? It’s got its own budget – and the students manage that budget.’

It is a story which says everything about the man recently elected as BMA council chair. From that day, Dr Dolphin has been driven by a desire to help people organise and make their circumstances better.

‘It’s slightly different to that medical school entry cliché of why you’re there being “to help people”, Dr Dolphin says. ‘That’s a cliché because it is true and most of us feel that way. But I can’t seem to stop trying to get people to stand up for themselves and to demand a voice. It is a strong motivator for me to get people to show solidarity and empower them through that. I have not always thought about it – it is relatively new to me to reflect on that but looking back that is what I have always been doing.’

Dr Dolphin grew up in Essex, going to school in Colchester. His mother was a primary-school teacher and his dad was a paramedic. It was a ‘very education-oriented’ household. Medical school was the destination for Dr Dolphin and he chose Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry after finding his interview and visit at Oxford ‘surreal’ and ‘unenjoyable’.

At Barts he found ‘normal, nice, fun people’ and – at the time of writing – had been back just last week to talk to the latest intake of freshers. 

While at medical school he was quick to get involved with students’ association roles and was student president for two years. It was a role which gave him a regular and significant outlet for his desire to improve the lot of his colleagues and to empower people.

Dr Dolphin took a two-year sabbatical to take on the role of president and nearly didn’t end up finishing his medical degree – and even asked whether he could just be given a BSc so he could leave. But a tutor advised him to finish the medical degree on the basis it would make him a desirable candidate for jobs outside of medicine.

The job market was very different then and upon graduation there were instant offers. ‘So, I took the job, and then they offer you another job, and then before you know it, you’re kind of caught on the conveyor belt and I’m still here nearly 30 years later,’ he says. 

Dr Dolphin started anaesthetic training in 2006 and hasn’t looked back since – now working as a consultant anaesthetist in London, where he also lives with his husband. 

One day, a friend from medical school told Dr Dolphin that the only way to have an effect in a leadership and representative role would be to go into medical politics and to do it through the BMA. At that point, Dr Dolphin had not had any role with the association.

He went to a North Thames regional junior doctors committee meeting, as it was known then, and has been involved ever since – becoming involved with what was also then called the BMA junior doctors committee executive and holding a seat on BMA council since 2012. He has also chaired his hospital trust’s local negotiating committee, which represents and negotiates for doctors at employer level.

Earlier this year, Dr Dolphin was elected as chair of the BMA council having been one of five candidates, with two of these running as a co-chair nomination.

He took over from previous chair Professor Philip Banfield who served as council chair for three years and led the association through the COVID-19 aftermath and multiple waves of industrial action across the medical profession.

When his election was confirmed, Dr Dolphin described the moment as an ‘honour and privilege’ and thanked Professor Banfield for his ‘fantastic leadership’.

But why now?

‘At this time, I feel I’m ready to do this role – I feel I can do it. I’m not sure I was equipped fully five or 10 years ago but I’ve got the exposure, the experience and the capacity now. And I feel that I can do a good job.’

Even for someone who has held significant leadership roles and responsibilities already, there is, no doubt, always an element of the unknown when taking this sort of position. So how has Dr Dolphin found the early weeks? 

‘It has been a lot,’ he says. ‘I knew Phil was working hard but there is so much stuff that goes on entirely in the background that even those of us on council don’t see. It is the everyday running of the organisation and the responsibilities you have.’ 

Dr Dolphin was thrown in at the deep end quickly with a special representative meeting organised early in his tenure urgently debating the risk of the NHS England 10-year health plan to the medical profession at large and the delivery of safe and effective care to patients, under the auspices of BMA representative body chair Amit Kochhar. 

Industrial action also came in the first month which meant long days from 8am to 10pm – plus calls through the night – dealing with the derogations process, requests from hospitals for exemptions from industrial action where there should be an urgent requirement for staff to return to work owing to ‘massive, externally declared’ events. 

‘It’s calmed down a bit now,’ Dr Dolphin says. ‘I’ve had time to think about other things and my priorities and to spend time working through my to-do list and lots of reading to ensure I’m across everything. I want to make sure I’m doing a good job and not just firefighting.’

Dr Dolphin is aware part of a role like this is reacting to the times you are in – often BMA council chairs will see their terms dominated by a major theme such as NHS reorganisation or pandemic, for example. ‘Sometimes you only know what those things are in retrospect,’ he says.

However, in terms of what is in his control – or the issues of the day that are already known – Dr Dolphin is clear about the areas where he would like to have an effect. His legacy might well be to continue the work begun under Professor Banfield to revolutionise the way the BMA is organised and runs – moving to a structure which emphasises local organisation and empowers members, building local capacity and a sustainable model, which means the profession can advocate for itself much more powerfully and long into the future.

He says: ‘We can’t just be centrally led. We need people to be trained, educated and empowered to step up without needing back up. They need the knowledge so we can all be the BMA rather than just people in BMA House. That will give us a lot more power and the constant ability to change things at a local level. We need to always be doing that alongside national contracts and national professional work.’

Dr Dolphin adds: ‘This is work that started several years ago and will still be going for years from now because it’s a journey and you can never complete perfection. But if we can mobilise the resources of the BMA in the right way so it isn’t centralised we can make a big impact.’

Much of Dr Dolphin’s time will inevitably be focused on the external as well as the internal – the reactive often vying for time with the proactive. With so much work to do around unemployment, doctor replacement, pay restoration and health service reform there are unlikely to be many quiet moments.

‘For all of these issues there will be short-term actions and long-term actions,’ Dr Dolphin says. ‘Sometimes the outcomes won’t be seen for five or 10 years, but we are going to try and build wins into everything we do and embed improvements for us all. I want us to continue to be ambitious and to fix what we can and react quickly to the events we cannot foresee.’

Dr Dolphin added: ‘Above all what the Government needs to understand is that we are not just speaking on behalf of 200,000 members – as powerful as that should be. We are also speaking as experts. And we are speaking as advocates for our patients. This is not just a case of self-interest – we want to make things better.’

Ultimately, if doctors continue to be ignored on all of these crucial issues, industrial action will be the result.

He says: ‘We’ve tried pointing out the droves of doctors leaving the NHS and the country, we have tried to point out the deep problems with workforce planning but they haven’t listened. We have been forced to take industrial action before and we will again if required.

‘I fear the Government may have misunderstood the dynamic at play. I think they believe the money they have provided so far has dampened our resolve to fight for pay restoration. I believe that is a major error. I hope they see sense before we have to take more industrial action because no one wants that to happen.’