Obituary: Robert Dolan

The death has recently taken place at his home in Harrow-on-the-Hill, London, of consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Robert Dolan, aged 69, the recently retired chief executive of the East London National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust (ELFT).

Born in Galway and graduating in medicine from University College Galway in 1972, he worked initially for the Eastern Health Board and was appointed registrar at Charing Cross Hospital in 1979, where he trained in psychiatry, becoming a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists the same year. He was appointed a consultant in forensic psychiatry in 1982 and held a number of consultancy posts, reaching the rank of medical director at three trusts, including East London, where, in 2006, he became chief executive.

He strongly believed clinical staff providing services were best placed to lead the trusts and that general managers should support clinicians. During his tenure as CEO, a position rarely held by a doctor, East London gained foundation and university trust status.

Trust’s success

On his retirement, it served a population of 1,380,000 with 5,000 staff and a budget of £353 million, providing integrated, patient-centred care. It is now one of the UK’s largest specialist NHS providers.

In 2015 ELFT was named trust of the year for patient safety and won the Health Service Journal’s award for staff engagement.

In 2016 the Care Quality Commission gave the trust an overall rating of “outstanding”, and it won the Journal’s Provider Trust of the Year Award. Dolan’s successor, Dr Navina Evans, described him as a “formidable leader”, acknowledging the “huge part” he played in the trust’s success. The Dr Robert Dolan Leadership Award was established in his honour.

Highly influential

Dolan was highly influential in government policy on the transfer of secure or “special” hospitals to mental health trusts and he had a national profile in advising the British Department of Health and the Home Office. He was pivotal in shaping national policy in three important areas: England’s three high-security hospitals, policy regarding dangerous and severe personality disorder, and mental health care strategies in prisons.

Stressing the importance of a multidisciplinary and motivated workforce, he was an expert adviser at the Department of Health, and wrote documentation that continues to inform workforce planning in forensic psychiatry in England and Wales. He was also pioneering in involving patients in various aspects of the trust’s work.

He combined, always in the service of clinical imperatives, entrepreneurial flair with outstanding financial management skills, deploying his peerless rationality in the interests of patient care.

Serving one of the most culturally diverse parts of the UK, he was particularly committed to providing services to ethnic minorities. In the 1990s he created at West London the most extensive range of units and services in forensic psychiatry in England, resulting in the Department of Health selecting the trust as a partner organisation for the integration of Broadmoor Hospital into the NHS, a project on which Dolan was the clinical lead.

In 1991-2 he was a member of the Committee of Inquiry into Allegations of Ill Treatment at Ashworth Hospital.

A Labour supporter who had campaigned for Michael D Higgins, he had an intense and lifelong commitment to public service. In UCG he was auditor of the literary and debating society and editor of Unity, the student newspaper.

Staff and patients

Extraordinarily well-read, his conversation was both witty and wise, with a forensic logic that was, ingeniously, both concealed and revealed in story and anecdote. He was warm and generous and famously hospitable. At his funeral Baroness Meacher described him as “loved and respected by literally thousands of doctors, nurses, other staff and patients in East London”.

He is survived by his wife Jean, their children Joe and Clara, and his stepsons Amrit and Simran.