Dr Alka Patel

Alka has a passion project – to sew the seeds of lifestyle medicine into everyday conversations, to embed the roots of health into daily living, to create a canopy of lifestyle focus across communities and to flourish on the fruits of connectivity.

She is an advocate of preventative medicine and health promotion, with a keen interest in lifestyle medicine, behaviour change and patient empowerment.

She enjoys focusing on the changes individuals, communities and organisations want to make and helping them to set and reach their goals.

“Strength doesn’t come from what you do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.”

She is a Portfolio GP and Health Coach. Her interest in coaching first stemmed during her own appraisal a few years ago, when, unknown to her at the time, her appraiser engaged her in a coaching conversation that resulted in her making a significant professional decision! It was then that she realised the power of the cathartic nature of coaching and went on to develop her own skills so that she too could have these transformative conversations with others. She now uses coaching skills in her daily practice to create lasting behaviour change – in consultations with patients, in appraisal conversations and with her teenage children!

She qualified from Guys and St Thomas’s Hospital in 1990 and completed her GP training in 1999, achieving a distinction in her membership exams for the Royal College of General Practitioners. She has a broad range of clinical experience, with Diplomas in family planning, obstetrics and gynaecology, child health, dermatology, diabetes and advanced primary care management, focusing on collaborative healthcare and leadership.

She has an array of current roles with the RCGP, GMC CQC and NHSE and has an unquenched thirst to look for creative solutions that push boundaries towards new possibilities.

Her new role is as a self-declared Activist for Lifestyle Medicine!