Lifetime Achievement Award 2021
– Dr Peter Boffa

Dr Peter Boffa: Proposal for LAA by Dr Rupert Courtenay-Evans (abbreviated by Dr John Spicer)

Dr Peter Boffa was proposed by Dr Rupert Courtney Evans for the CMS Lifetime Achievement Award – a proposal based on his personal and professional knowledge of Peter’s skills.

Peter was born and educated in Croydon, son of Paul – another Croydon GP and a grandson of Paul – a Prime Minister of Malta. Peter attended Selhurst Grammar, then St George’s Medical School, qualifying in 1976. Initially an F1 [then house surgeon] at St James, Balham, he moved to Mayday Hospital as an SHO and Registrar working with Rupert among others.

Notable among his experiences there was the identification and sourcing of a typhoid outbreak to a food take-away shop in South Norwood where Peter, having made the diagnosis, stopped the index case infecting anyone else. His work on the isolation ward led to contact with one of the sisters, Pauline, who he wooed and married. While at Mayday he gained his MRCP and moved off to Cambridge to train further in Respiratory Medicine.

In 1982 Peter made a career change into Primary Care and joined Ken Heber’s practice in Old Coulsdon, after gaining his GP qualification in 1985. It was then that he started looking after Rupert and his family – seeing him through to what he refers to as ‘old age’!

Tragically Peter lost his wife Pauline to cancer several years ago, a loss inevitably affecting both his family and himself enormously. Nonetheless, he was able to continue working at Old Coulsdon, enlarging the practice to the successful organisation it now is.

Croydon has benefited from Peter’s work in many other ways: as LMC Chair, PEC Chair, and GP rep to the old Health Authority and FHSA, and successor bodies. He has led the development of the appraisal process locally and, not least, trained more than 20 young GPs.

Without doubt, a worthy recipient of the CMS Lifetime Achievement Award.