Jim V. Parle MBChB, DRCOG, MRCGP, FRCGP, MD

Jim Parle is a Professor of Primary Care and is Course Director for the Physician Assistant PGDip program. Jim entered General Practice in 1982 and was Senior Partner from 1983 to 2000, continuing part-time General Practice alongside academia since then.

Jim’s main activity in his 20 years as an academic has been in education, leading on the introduction of a major community-based teaching strand within the MBChB course; championing the place of non-biosciences such as ethics and law and behavioral science in the medical curriculum; establishing the PA PGDip, and leading innovative educational approaches such as using laywomen to teach medical students how to perform female pelvic examinations. His research interests have been predominantly in thyroid epidemiology and in education.

He has received grants from, among others, the RCGP, PPP (now the Health Foundation), and the NIHR. He is well known in the fields of thyroid epidemiology and, in education, particularly in the development of innovative approaches to learning clinical skills. He has spoken at numerous conferences on these issues e.g. quinquennial thyroid conference, Buenos Aires, Ottawa conference on assessment, Toronto.