'My roles as an MP and a doctor are similar'

MP Peter Prinsley has swapped his surgeries at two Norfolk hospitals for constituency surgeries over the county border in Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket.

The ear, nose and throat surgeon was not widely expected to win the Suffolk seat in this summer's general election as it had been viewed as a safe Conservative one.

Dr Prinsley said he was not able to "completely stop his existing job" as soon as he was elected as he still had "patients to see and clinics to run".

But he said his main commitments now were his political ones.

Dr Prinsley worked at James Paget University Hospitals Foundation Trust in Gorleston and also at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals Foundation Trust before the election, but since July he runs only occasional clinics and performs surgery at James Paget.

"It is very difficult to provide any proper continuity of care to patients. If I operate on a Monday and I am not there on Tuesday, it can be tricky," he said.

Dr Prinsley said it was "helpful to know a bit about how the NHS works" in his new role.

Labour had five MPs who were previously doctors elected at the election, up from just one in the last Parliament. Dr Prinsley regards this as "helpful" and says they are "listened to" on health matters.

He added that the roles of politician and surgeon were very different but they did have some similarities.

"It is not, for instance, a coincidence that the interactions with constituents we have are called 'surgeries' and, of course, I have been doing surgeries all my life," he said.

"People come with problems where you have to quickly work out if there is anything we can do practically [and] politically to help.

"Being able to work out what people's problems are and thinking about whether there is anything we can practically do to help those problems is a little bit like the problem-solving doctors do, so there are similarities in that respect, for sure."

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