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Farewell to Dr Jenny Lebus - Our longest serving member of staff

It is with great sadness that we say a fond farewell to Dr Jenny Lebus who will be retiring at the end of June after 32 years of service at the Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Imperial College London and its predecessor medical schools.
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Jenny began her academic teaching career when her trainer, Dr James Scobie, who was a GP tutor for the old Charing Cross Medical School, invited her to accompany him to a study day with the students. Her interest was ignited and she joined a department that at that time consisted of three people when General Practice occupied only one week of a five-year curriculum.

Despite having no administrative support or funding to pay general practices, Jenny was successful in recruiting practices and saw the course and department steadily grow from humble beginnings. From that one week in Year 4, the course grew to two weeks in Year 4 and two weeks in Year 5, whilst also changing course names from Core 1 and Core 2, to General Practice and Primary Health Care and General Practice Student Assistantship (GPSA). Now, both courses occupy three weeks in Years 5 and 6 and are central to the Imperial College's teaching in General Practice. Jenny subsequently became co-lead of the GPSA alongside Grant Blair and has remained in post to this day.

In addition to core General Practice teaching, Jenny, together with Dr Marilyn Plant and later Dr Elizabeth Muir, developed the Early Patient Contact Course in collaboration with obstetricians and psychiatrists at Imperial College. After the merger of the Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School with Imperial College, she also became one of the first Locality Academic Facilitators to be appointed. Here, she acted as liaison for community teachers, organised locality events and visited practices to ensure quality and provide support to new and existing teachers. In 2011, she received a Teaching Excellence award from Imperial College in recognition for the years of dedication, hard work and teaching expertise that Jenny has provided.

As Sian Powell, current co-course lead, noted, “It has been an honour and privilege to work alongside her over the past four years. To me, Jenny brings to life the meaning of 'phronesis'; we have all benefited enormously from her practical wisdom over the years and will miss this greatly, as well as her patience, kindness, and sense of fun. We all wish her and her husband, Richard, the very best in the next exciting stage of their lives, and look forward to seeing evidence of their adventures on Facebook!

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