Bill Noble: Enthusiastic, slothful, conflicted

Biography

Bill Noble, 60, is medical director at Marie Curie, the charity for people affected by terminal illness. He was a GP and hospice doctor before becoming an academic physician in Sheffield’s palliative care service in 1996, and he led a strategic review of the role of the specialty in 2009 as president of the Association for Palliative Medicine. He believes that television and film have created unrealistic expectations of what modern medicine should achieve and has urged training for doctors to communicate with families and for palliative care in multimorbidity. He is editor in chief of BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care and honorary professor of community palliative care at Sheffield Hallam University.