Primary Care Coaching Faculty

Dr Paula Barrett

Providing the space, time and focus to explore and enhance career and personal development with a Coachee is a relatively new but exciting experience for me.

Being a coach is a great chance to use the breadth of my 25 years clinical experience to support and develop others in our profession. I have worked as a GP for over 20 years as a partner, salaried and locum GP. I have been an undergraduate seminar leader for medical students for 15 years and act as a Champion Clinical examiner for the University of Southampton. I have also been a Foundation year 2 GP trainer.

Offering coaching to GPs is, for me, another much needed way in which I can contribute to others’ professional and personal wellbeing. How often do we actively use our skills to enhance the experience of our colleagues in increasingly challenging circumstances? I hope to offer my peers this service to enhance both clarity and vision in their goals and actions.

Dr Tamsin Betts

I am a qualified doctor and trained yoga teacher. I run my own business coaching professionals and teaching yoga, mindfulness and meditation. I worked as a GP for several years, before initially deciding to take a career break in order to bring up my young family.  I have retained strong links with the NHS and am married to a practising GP. I am fully aware of the stresses that working within the NHS can bring.  I can also see how rewarding and fulfilling it can be in the right circumstances.

I have a keen interest in health, well-being and nutrition. I recognise the importance of physical and emotional well-being to enable us to perform at our best on a professional and personal level.

As a coach, I offer people time and space to reflect on their situation and empower them to make positive change by setting goals that align with their personal values.

I strongly believe that coaching can stimulate professional enthusiasm, interest and motivation, whilst creating a greater sense of overall well-being.

I attained ILM 7 in coaching in mentoring in 2019 and have coached numerous medical and non medical individuals since then. I also work as a case manager with the Wessex Professional Support Unit and help to run the career coaching department there. I have a PG cert in career development and a ILM 7 in coaching supervision

Dr Helen Gutteridge

I am a GP, a coach, a mentor and appraiser. I am also a lead GP for the Bournemouth Hospital Urgent Treatment Centre. I have lived and worked in and around Poole for over 20 years. I have had a number of different GP roles and understand the challenges in balancing career, bringing up a young family and trying to look after one’s own emotional and physical well being.
I passionately believe coaching can give people the time, space and opportunity to develop both professionally and personally.

I have been a GP for over 20 years. I am currently a GP locum, as well as a lead GP for the Urgent Treatment Centre at Bournemouth Hospital. I have been coaching GPs as part of the GP faculty for Dorset Primary Care Workforce for the last 18 months. I have been a salaried GP and a GP partner so have acquired a broad knowledge of many of the challenges and rewards that the NHS can offer.

I have coached GPs as part of the GP faculty for Dorset Primary Care Workforce for the last 18 months. I also offer coaching as part of my role as a lead GP in the Urgent Care service.

Dr Nazia Kausar 

We can all do better, and coaching helps us achieve our goals. 

In the NHS, we lead busy lives with family and work etc, and juggling all our commitments whilst aiming high can often seem daunting. We can feel like we’re sinking, and even staying afloat at times seems too difficult. Sometimes we just want to know how best to deal with people or situations. Sometimes our goals just seem impossible to achieve. This is where coaching comes in. Coaching helps with clarity, and breaks things down into manageable tasks with a forward looking focus. Ultimately it helps us overcome issues we think are insurmountable, and therefore improves performance. 

Along with being a busy GP, I am a certified Coach and Mentor to clinical and non-clinical personnel both within the NHS and outside, so allow me to help you be the best you can be. 

Coaching is a passion for me, as I have seen first hand the difference it can make. Having had to move around numerous times since getting married, including working in different countries and also taking out 7 years to have my kids, I’ve had to learn to be adaptable and integrate into each new area, which has enabled me to ultimately be the resilient person I am today. I often use coaching techniques in my daily life, and will endeavour to give you the tools and skills to ultimately be able to coach yourself, whatever the situation, longer term. 

I have achieved the globally recognised ILM 7 Strategic Executive Coaching qualification giving me the tools to be able to coach anyone, at all levels of a team or business, regardless of seniority. I am comfortable coaching people from a wide variety of settings and backgrounds, each with their own individual needs and potential.

Having been teaching, coaching and mentoring in various forms for over 20 years, let me coach you to be the best you.

Dr Simon Phillips

I am a practising GP, a GP Training Programme Director, an Appraiser and a Case Manager in Wessex Deanery Professional Support and Wellbeing Service.

I have lived and worked in Dorset for the last 20 years. I have spent the last year studying and working towards my ILM-7 coaching qualification.

I have been coaching doctors informally for the last 10 years in all my educational roles and feel I am more effective with the formal skills I have learned doing the ILM 7.

I believe that coaching can enhance our already present leadership skills, bringing benefits both to our practice and personal lives. This is increasingly important as we seek to find the best path for ourselves, our patients and our colleagues in this increasingly complex and pressurised world.

Dr Patrick Seal  

I worked as a full-time GP in a large Poole training practice (over 30 000 patients with 14 partners and several salaried colleagues) for over 30years, retiring in 2021. I was a GP trainer for 20years, a member of Dorset LMC for 8y and chaired Poole Central Locality (subsequently PCN) for over 10years. One of our sons is a busy GP in London and keeps me in touch with some of the ever-changing demands on colleagues across the health care professions as well as management and leadership colleagues too.

I trained as an executive coach in 2016, gaining first ILM 5 in 2017, ILM7 in Coaching and Mentoring in 2021, and ILM7 in Coaching Supervision in 2023. In 2024 I gained the Professional Certificate of Advanced Study in Coaching Supervision from Oxford Brookes University.

Mentoring, Coaching and Coaching supervision all involve dialogic encounter with choice decisions resting with you as client. My key aspiration is to encourage and facilitate a thinking space for you to think about your stuff. For me the switch from the coalface of general practice to the privileged space that coaching allows has been a revelation and I aspire to offer a space from which your change choices and decisions can translate into new steps.

Dr Kate Szymankiewicz

Coaching is a wonderful opportunity to work out how to get the best from yourself and from life. I’m a GP and a busy mum of 3, so know how challenging work-life balance can be and have enjoyed the benefits of coaching myself. I particularly enjoy mentoring newly qualified GPs – something I wish I’d had access to!

I completed my GP training in Dorset and worked as a salaried and subsequently GP retainer for 10 years before moving over the border to Wiltshire in 2019, initially locuming and now working in Salisbury as salaried GP.

I have an ongoing passion for Global Health following a 6 month sabbatical volunteering at a hospice in Tanzania am the co-founder of the charity SWIFTSS which supports medical training in Africa.

I am also trained in Mindful Emotion Coaching, with a particular interest in the effects of toxic stress and incorporate much of this into my coaching and mentoring sessions. I have my ILM5 qualification in coaching and mentoring and it continues to be a pleasure to help colleagues find time to focus on themselves.

Dr Fiona Walker

I first started ‘coaching’ as a Ski Instructor and loved that ‘light bulb’ moment when something clicked and a seemingly impossible skill became achievable.  I still love these moments. 

So Teaching/ GP education has always been an interest.  I was a GP Trainer and continue to Tutor the GP Trainer courses, to examine and to supervise.  I have the ILM-5 qualification.

As a GP, I have been a Partner, Salaried and Locum GP.  I enjoy expedition/ sports and lifestyle medicine.  This experience of diverse roles means I appreciate the benefits and disadvantages of different ways of working, of having a portfolio career as well as trying to make work fit in with other important life priorities. 

However I am acutely aware when I am coaching/ mentoring that we have to find the right path for you and you are my priority.  Coaching is not ‘remedial therapy’: it provides the time and the tools to help you make positive changes which are right for you.

Here is some of my feedback:

“Excellent”       “Insighful”        “Relaxed”

“Amazing to have the time and space to evaluate and reflect on things”

“I don’t think I could have navigated this big career move without you”