Welcome to the Newsome Health Menopause podcast.

I'm Dr Louise Newsome, a GP and menopause specialist,

and I run the Newsome Health Menopause and wellbeing centre here in Stratford-upon-Avon.

So today this podcast is unusual for two reasons. Firstly, I'm not in my clinic. I'm down near Sillsbury in the studios for a company called 14 Fish. And secondly, it's unusual

because I have a man, not a woman with me. And I

usually interview women. I have had a few men. So today I'm really excited to have Mark Coombe,

who is the educational director for 14 Fish. So thanks for agreeing to do this, Mark.

It's my pleasure. So I'm here because we've had a really exciting meeting talking about a menopause

education program that we're working together on, which is really going to help give healthcare

professionals confidence in diagnosing and managing the menopause. So before we talk about that, Mark,

can you just talk a bit about your background and what led you to be sitting

here in the headquarters of 14 fish? Essentially, I qualified in London at St George's, had a brief

spell in the military, and then when I left, the military became a GP. But during my time as a GP,

I've been a GP now for about 20 years. My main other interest is

being in assessment and education, and in particular assessment of people to make sure that

they're competent for doing a job. And that's at various levels in all sorts of specialities,

including general practice and nursing.

As part of that education and assessment, I got involved with, as Louise says, a company

called 14 Fisher at the time were very much looking at an annual appraisal and revalidation of GPs.

And it seemed obvious to me that if you were doing that to be able to appraise every year

and to be able to revalidate you needed to do some education. So I set up the education

part of 14 fish. So appraisal, that's something that all GPs and nurses have to go through?

...