M4RD Welcome a New CEO

Hello from our new CEO…Dr Lucy McKay!

Lucy was one of the founders of Barts and The London Society for Rare Diseases who started holding extra-curricular lectures about rare diseases for their peers in 2011. With her colleagues she went on to establish the national group, Students4RareDiseases, in 2013…now Medics4RareDiseases.

Lucy is interested in rare diseases because her brother suffered from a rare disease and she grew up seeing the challenges that people faced when living with a rare disease. These often include a long and arduous journey to diagnosis, a multitude of uncoordinated appointments, the carer roles that family members often have to take on and having to be an expert in a condition that most people (including doctors) have never heard of.

Lucy studied medicine and is keen to spread the word amongst medical students and doctors in training that although each rare disease is rare, together they’re common. She believes that although doctors cannot know about every rare disease they should be aware of the prevalence of rare diseases as a whole (estimated at 1 in17 people in a lifetime) and the common challenges faced by those with rare diseases. Lucy hopes that patients and doctors can both benefit from the work of M4RD by having more fulfilled patient-doctor relationships in which the patient feels supported and the doctor feels empowered.