This is a special preview episode to the interview that follows in the next podcast when i will be sitting down and sharing a couple of hours with Dr Mike Heber, who is retired GP. Mike is a smiler, a figure of warm cheer and happiness that combines with an effervescent and optimistic outlook on the world around him that is strangely contagious. 

Mike started his general practice career and worked on the south coast in Hastings for a number of years in a very busy GP surgery situated in a highly deprived area. During this time he quietly built an impressive career within general practice academia and helped forge ahead with the development of the NHS England appraisal scheme, as well as becoming a Royal College of General Practitioners Examiner. Also a man of the high seas and experienced sea dog, this escape provided him with the the rest and recovery that he needed for for a busy Primary Care post. Mike was also honorary medical advisor for Hastings Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

In 2003 he took up a role as a single handed GP for a number of years in Sutton Valence, just south of Maidstone. During this time he developed a a solid reputation as a selfless GP and patient advocate. Unofficially, he was the GP to the GPs and had the majority of local family doctors as his patients which spoke volumes on his ability to understand the complex issues of being a Primary Care physician. 

Mike retired last year to the sorrow and sadness of all his staff and patients.Over the last few years Mike also worked within the Royal College of General practitioners practice support programme, essentially helping practices that had struggled with regulatory issues and possibly been placed into ''special measures'' by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Mike's USP is his ability to bring a particular brand and characteristic to nurturing and embracing struggling practices, and has a unique skill for converting despair and hopelessness, rife in somany pockets of primary care, engrained in staff attitudes from negative cultures into hope and optimism. He continues his fantastic valuable work with a smile and self-effacement that those who know him best associate with him. The episode features interviews with local GPs Dr Helen Terrell, Dr Sara Butler-Gallie and Jacky Gilliard, practice nurse, not to mention two members of the patient participation group.