Professor Yvonne Carter led academic primary care in east London through a renaissance before leading the new Warwick Medical School to independence.
Her reputation as a clinical academic was founded on combining a basic love of doctoring, especially general practice in underprivileged areas, with a rigorous approach to medical research and an ethos of nurturing professionalism in medical education.
To this she added a real interest in university life and, seeing the medical school as an important connection between a university and its local community, she strived to optimise the link.
Professor Carter's own interest in GP research was fostered by Professor Brian McGuinness, then senior partner at the Runcorn practice in Cheshire where she trained. Professor McGuinness was influential in demonstrating to her the possibility of combining general practice with an academic career. She took this to heart and was to become one of the leading lights of research practice and innovation at the RCGP, where she fostered the research practice accreditation scheme, publishing extensively all the while.
The career pathway led Yvonne from Liverpool to Keele on a research training fellowship in 1990, and then to Birmingham in 1992 as a senior clinical lecturer, a post which she left in 1996 to become the youngest professor of general practice and primary care in the UK at Barts and the London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry.
A working GP for over 20 years, and a fellow since 1994, Professor Carter continued her roles at the RCGP. She was a member of the RCGP Council from 1994-2004.
Professor Carter was appointed as dean of Warwick Medical School in October 2004. She retired in July due to her failing health and died on 20 October.
