A doctor who has spent more than three decades caring for patients in Eden has retired.
Dr Phil Harbot, who has lived in Maulds Meaburn for 30 years, has latterly been based at the Upper Eden Medical Practice in Kirkby Stephen.
He told the Herald it had been his privilege to work in rural areas that are a long way from the nearest hospital, trying to treat as many patients as possible close to home.
“It has changed a lot over 30 years,” said Dr Harbot of his work.
He explained that life in general practice had become busier as more of a patient’s secondary care is being performed in a primary care setting.
Care which was previously provided in hospitals, such as the monitoring of illnesses, is now carried out more in general practice.
“I’ve enjoyed working as part of a big community. In the places I have worked the families are all linked and it’s like being part of one big family,” said Dr Harbot, who was also part of the CHoC (Cumbria Health on Call) out-of-hours scheme from 1995 to 2020.
Over the years, he said, the complexity of medicine had changed which had presented patients with huge benefits and advantages, but there was a down side.
“Too much time is now spent tapping at a keyboard rather than eyeballing people — I like face-to-face contact,” he said. “The best part of the job is seeing and dealing with people on a face-to-face basis,” said Dr Harbot.
Raised at Pocklington, East Yorkshire, where he attended Pocklington School, Dr Harbot then went to St Andrew’s University to study medicine before qualifying from Manchester University in 1981.
He then worked at hospitals in Scotland before completing his trainee year to be a General Practitioner (GP) in North Uist. After finishing that in 1984 he went back to working in hospitals and ended up at the Cumberland Infirmary, Carlisle, in 1988, where he did anaesthetics for a year.
In 1989, he started as a GP at Shap where he stayed for 12 years. He then did a couple of years as a locum working around the Eden Valley practices before going to work at Appleby for 10 years.
He moved to the Upper Eden Medical Practice at Kirkby Stephen in 2013 and has worked there up until his retirement on Friday.
Dr Harbot is married to Caroline and together they have six grown-up children.
In retirement, he plans to spend more time with his family and, if he can keep his health, carry on doing all the outdoor Cumbrian pursuits that he loves — from fell walking and mountain biking to open water swimming and gardening.
He also enjoys ski-ing, volunteering for Cumbria Wildlife Trust plus other local nature conservation causes, and attending the cinema and local theatre events.
“I’ve no regrets with what I have done in my career — I would recommend it to anybody,” he said.
