Episode 5-
Angus Walls
Angus Walls on Being a Rebel
Breaking away from tradition and challenging the status quo are the hallmarks of an extraordinary person.
Today’s guest is Angus Walls, who, across his forty years in the field, has excelled at finding better ways to care for his patients. Since 2013, Angus has worked as the Director of the Edinburgh Dental Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Between 2017 - 2018, Angus served as the ninety-fourth President of the International Association for Dental Research and opened his inaugural address by saying: "I've had an almost career-long interest in oral health and aging".
He's always put this vulnerable population at the front and center of his work, tackling the complex problems that this group face with creativity and compassion.
Prior to his current position, Angus spent eighteen years at Newcastle University as a Professor of Restorative Dentistry, only a few miles from his family home of North Shields in the North East of England. Angus has never been afraid to follow opportunity, even if there is a strong tradition in the UK to practice where you studied.
Resources
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International Association for Dental Research
What's In This Episode
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Why did Angus decide to go against the grain and practice away from where he studied?
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How Angus has challenged the status quo throughout his career.
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Why Angus is so interested in oral health and aging.
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What Angus will do next.
Transcript
Recording:
Extraordinary.
Leader.
Innovative.
Integrity.
Honest.
Courageous.
Curious.
Thoughtful.
Brave.
Unafraid.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
There is a place where technology and art meet, where work and play are one and the same. When the threads of curiosity are pulled in this place, the spark of innovation ripples across industries. Those who make this place their home are giants. Titans, who pursue creative passion while leaving their mark.
Recording:
Creative.
Flexible.
Brilliant.
Clever.
Confident.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
They are courageous thought leaders set on changing the practice of dentistry and their corner of the world. More than the sum of their parts, we deconstruct the traits that bind these uncommon innovators.
Recording:
Humble.
Daring.
Disciplined.
Playful.
Principled.
Spontaneous.
Open.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
To discover what makes them... Contrary to Ordinary, where we explore the extraordinary.
Hi there. I'm Dr. Kim Kutsch, host and founder at CariFree. I'm fascinated by what makes the paradigm shifters, world shakers and art makers tick. Let's embark on a journey. Extraordinary is a place where ordinary people choose to exist. Together we will track the peaks of possibility, illuminate the depths of resilience, and navigate the boundless landscape of innovation, to discover how some of the most innovative dentists and thought leaders unlock their potential and became extraordinary. On this season of Contrary to Ordinary, we explore the motivation, lives and character of the innovators who see limitless potential around them. The people behind some of the largest paradigm shifts in the practice of dentistry.
There aren't many people who are willing to raise their hand and say, "I think this can be done better." To me, breaking away from tradition and challenging the status quo are the hallmarks of an extraordinary person. Today's guest is Angus Walls, who across his 40 years in the field, has excelled at finding better ways to care for his patients.
Since 2013, Angus has worked as the director of the Edinburgh Dental Institute at the beautiful University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Between 2017 and 2018, Angus served as the 94th President of the International Association for Dental Research and opened his inaugural address by saying, "I've had an almost career-long interest in oral health and aging." He's always put this vulnerable population at the front and center of his work, tackling the complex problems that this group faced with creativity and compassion.
Prior to his current position, Angus spent 18 years at Newcastle University as Professor of Restorative Dentistry, only a few miles from his family home. However, he's never been afraid to follow opportunity, even if there's a strong tradition in the UK to practice where you studied. Angus was born in the northeast of England into a family full of medical practitioners.
Angus Walls:
My mother was a community pediatrician and my father was just a general practitioner. I'm sorry, I shouldn't say just, he was a general practitioner. And obviously there's a debate, do I want to follow in that family path? And I should say that my grandfather was a surgeon, my aunt was one of the first human geneticists in the northeast of England, my uncle was a consultant physician in a hospital setting. So there's a lot of medicine floating around in the background. And my brother was two years into a medical program.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Oh, wow. So you got a whole family...
Angus Walls:
Whole family pedigree of medicine. And did I want to follow that family pedigree? And I had a long, long conversation with my father about what he found to be satisfying in life and basically he didn't find his work, per se, particularly satisfying. Because what he said to me was, that in a day if he could provide a diagnosis and treatment for 10% of the people that he saw, he thought that was pretty good and 20% probably didn't really have a problem, and the other 70% had to be referred on into the specialty service to get diagnostics done and all that sort of stuff.
He got his satisfaction out of leadership and politics and all the other bits that go alongside being a senior member of the medical community. And I thought about that and I thought I didn't particularly want that level of lack of personal satisfaction.
So my father was also skilled with his hands and he taught me all sorts of stuff. How to lay bricks, how to build, how to do plumbing, how to do home electrics, the works. And I realized that I really enjoyed that practical piece and so did some works experience.
I looked at quite a lot of stuff in general surgery, but in those days general surgery was pretty crude and some bits of it, frankly, still are. The orthopedic surgeons still get out a drill and a big one and decided that, that really wasn't for me. Plastics might have been, but no. Going into medical school with the idea at the end of it, "I'm going to become a consultant plastic surgeon," was just a bit too far-fetched. And I did some works experience with my local dentist and realized that, that level of patient engagement and that level of really fine precision work was something that would appeal to me.
So breaking the family mold, I applied to dental school and went up to dental school in 1974, in the local school in Newcastle, so 10 miles up the road. I studied there in the UK system dentistry, you go in at 18, you come out five years later as a fully-fledged dentist, so there's no graduate school piece. And graduated in 1979.
And at that stage then, there was the question of, "What do you do next?" And I was really interested in the more advanced stuff. So at the age of 23, I decided I've got to stop living with Mum and Dad. I've got to get away from Newcastle. So I went to work as an attendant. The post was a house officer job in a place called Bristol, in the southwest of England. So geographically, as far away from Newcastle as you could get in a dental school in the UK.
And I worked there for six months, went right through the specialties, so everything from oral medicine to oral and maxillofacial surgery, with bits of restorative in PEDs and prosthodontics. And I was quite unusual because most people did house jobs where they trained. And so I was odd because I wasn't a Bristol trainee, and I came with a completely different mindset.
So I remember walking into the Removable Pros Clinic and looking around the Removal Pros Clinic, and there were pictures on the walls of dentures and all those sort of things that you find in prosthetic. And my first patient needed a new partial denture. So I took some preliminary impressions and I sent them into the lab and I asked the lab for a surveyor, and the senior technician said, "What do you want a surveyor for?" To survey the car so I can design the denture? And he said, "But those are..." Professor Barry, the Professor of Prosthetics... "Those are his denture designs. Those are what you use."
Fortunately for me, there was an NHS consultant working in the same unit who had previously trained in Newcastle, and he just happened to walk past. And he said to the both of us, where did he train? I trained in Newcastle, sir. And he said to the senior technician, this young man knows about prosthodontics, give him a surveyor. So I got my surveyor and I surveyed the cast and decided and made a denture.
The Professor of Prosthetics where he came back was apoplectic, but I was eternally grateful to John Farrell, the consultant who intervened on my behalf. But I learned quite a lot when I was there and was still mulling over what I wanted to do. And one of the things I think a lot of dental students find interesting, attractive is oral maxillofacial surgery. It's the most traumatic bit. So my next job was an oral maxillofacial surgery job in a place called Stoke-on-Trent, which is about 35, 40 miles north of Birmingham in the middle of the country, very close to the M6, big, big motorway, lots of road accidents. There's quite a lot of heavy industry in Stoke. There's a big local mining industry, but also it's very famous because that's where all the potteries are. So that's where Wedgewood and Crown Darby and all the fantastic UK China is made.
And I remember going into my first clinic in Stoke and sitting down, and you're doing your clerking for patients, and what's your job? I'm a saga maker's bottom knocker. And I just looked at this guy as though he'd come off the moon. I hadn't got a clue what that was. He had some problems with his wisdom teeth. We arranged his wisdom teeth to come out and he left. And then my dental nurse turned to me and said, "You haven't got a clue what he did. Did you?" I said, "No." Okay. So the saga is the pile of clay pots that are ready to fire. So the saga maker stacks the pots in the kiln. And when they're fired, the saga maker's bottom knocker knocks all of the fired clay out and retrieves the fired pots. So this was the guy who was responsible for getting the plates out of the kilns in the Wedgewood pottery, which would then be decorated and made into the beautiful stuff that we see today. A really, really skillful, difficult task. And it made me realize that you had to understand what local people meant and did, and what their job meant to them. You really need to understand people to be able to provide good care for them.
I enjoyed IMFS, but the one thing I actually missed was patient contact, because most big surgical disciplines, you saw somebody, you did a procedure and then they went away. And that wasn't for me. And the other thing which I had recognized when I was applying for jobs was that whenever I applied for a job, I was asked why I hadn't worked in Newcastle. Because the tradition at the time was you did your first house job in the school where you trained. And I hadn't done that because I wanted to get away from home. So I had really good reason, but I could sense there was a question sitting there, was this guy such a pain in the fundamental that they didn't want him and he had to go somewhere else?
So I decided to go back to Newcastle. I went back there in January 1981, and I left Newcastle in December 2012.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Angus was, and still is a rebel, who had the courage to break the mold from deviating from family tradition to standing up for his prosthodontic patient in Bristol. Angus has always deliberately tried to search for new ways of doing things better. This pioneering spirit followed Angus back home to New Castle.
Angus Walls:
Did a couple of jobs within the hospital because the tradition at the time was you had to do three years of fundamentally apprenticeship in all disciplines before you started a focus. And then you did an exam, which was called Fellowship in Dental Surgery from one of the surgical world colleges. And when I was about to do my fellowship, I was mentored by a chap called John Murray. John's a pediatric dentist. He came to Newcastle when I was in my second last year, my penultimate year as a dental student and he happened to teach me as a dental student. I remember one clinic where I was having real difficulty getting this kid to behave and have some local anesthetic and went and I did all of the usual stuff of drawing a shape on his thumbnail with a bur and all of this stuff, and eventually we got a local anesthetic and did tiny restoration and John was just watching me and came up to me after that.
"That was really impressive. We need to make sure you got the right facilities the next time." But I was given the privilege of using the Houseman's chair, which had a three and one for the next time this kid came in. And I went through the same acclimatization process and I started to drill a hole in this lad's tooth. And he just reached up and he grabbed hold of my hand, the hand with the turbine in it, and he pulled it out of his mouth. Now I was so concerned to avoid his upper teeth, his lower teeth, his tongue, his lip-
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
His lip. Yeah.
Angus Walls:
... that I forgot that my thumb was just outside the mouth. So diamond bur full choke in a west bat, straight through my thumbnail.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Oh, ouch.
Angus Walls:
At which point I swore at the child. It's the only time I've ever sworn in front of a patient in my professional career.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Yeah.
Angus Walls:
And John Barry came over to me and said, "I think I'd better take over here."
So but fortunately it didn't put him off me.
And so it must have been, this would be 1982, there was an opportunity to apply for a Ph.D. fellowship from the UK's Medical Research Council. So this is, it's akin to the NIHR in terms of gravitas. And I worked with John Murray as a pediatric dentist and John McCabe, the material scientist, to build a proposal around the use of these new adhesive techniques and materials in children's dentition and wasn't initially successful, but I then went on to get my fellowship and the NRC had had somebody who pulled out of a program and I was next in the reserve. So I got my training fellowship, three years full-time Ph.D. Now that's for a clinician in the UK At the time, I think I was the second or third ever.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
I was going to say they had to be extremely unusual.
Angus Walls:
Yeah, very rare.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Right? Yeah.
Angus Walls:
Very rare. So when I came to the end of my Ph.D., it was the first Ph.D. out of pediatric dentistry in Newcastle ever. And I was under quite a lot of pressure to then become a pediatric dentist, as you might expect, because they wanted to now follow on the success, et cetera, et cetera.
And I don't have a problem at all working with children who aren't mentally and physically challenged. But I have a real difficulty with working with the mentally and physically challenged child. And the senior clinicians in that discipline spend all of their clinical time-
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Right. Exactly.
Angus Walls:
... working with that client group. And I just didn't think I could cope mentally and physically for the rest of my career with doing that.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Right. And kudos to those people that do.
Angus Walls:
Oh, massively. Absolutely. Massively.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
No, because I can't think of almost a greater challenge in dentistry.
Angus Walls:
Yep. But I just realized I wasn't one of them.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
I'm not either. I recognized that early in my career.
Angus Walls:
So I had an interesting but quite difficult discussion with John Murray because he obviously wanted me to follow on and become a pediatric dentist. And I can understand that.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
I was going to say he probably had some pretty high expectations for you. Yeah. Yeah.
Angus Walls:
And as it happens, at the time in the UK, there had been a moratorium, a ban on recruitment of new university academic staff across the whole academic field for about five years. And so there was a recognition that there was a real hole in the pipeline for academics. And there was a scheme launched called the New Blood Scheme, to find people who had interesting ideas in interesting areas to come into clinical academia. And so there were three New Blood lecturers in dentistry, myself, Jenny Kirkham from Leeds, again biologist. So it wasn't just for clinicians, it was right across the piece. And Eddie Lynch, who was working at the time-
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Oh yeah. Oh my goodness.
Angus Walls:
... at Queen Mary in London and Eddie and my programs were both about the same general subject, which was oral healthcare for older people.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
I mean, you went from one end of the spectrum to the other. You went from pediatric dentist and then you shifted all the way to care for the elderly. So what triggered that shift?
Angus Walls:
I knew I wanted to work with adults rather than children.
And I also knew that I wanted an academic career. And for better or for worse, academic careers are built on ability to attract grant income and funding. And it's the same the world over. And I looked at the areas of adult restorative dentistry and what might potentially be possible in terms of grant income. And my Ph.D. had been in dental materials, was dental materials a viable place to do a clinical career beyond that? And fundamentally, I felt the answer was no.
And so in '86, we were just beginning to think about reducing numbers of dentures the people having rotted teeth in their old age. How are they going to be managed? The problems of non-caries tooth loss, the tooth surface loss, the problems of caries, how that could go forward.
So really it was a pragmatic decision. It was an area that was ripe for exploration. And in Newcastle, there was an extremely good institute for aging and geriatric medicine. So there were opportunities to work with alongside medical colleagues, which would give greater access to grant income fundamentally. It wasn't a sort of road to Damascus moment, it was more a where am I most likely to be successful moment?
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Even when he was jumping through the hoops of grant funding, Angus went about things his own way. His two mentors supported him and guided him through the trials and tribulations in academic life. Angus has made so many contributions to the field, but for him, the most important has been raising the profile of the elderly and their care. But this group has a particular set of challenges to overcome.
Angus Walls:
It's not necessarily people who have complete dentures who are the biggest challenge. It's the people who have one complete denture against a natural dentition. Yeah. Which is in the UK about 15% of the over 65-year-old population. And the lack of stability of that complete prosthesis is just appalling.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Oh man. I had two patients that had a mandibular denture, opposing natural maxillary teeth. Literally that was the greatest challenge managing those poor patients. And ultimately we ended up with implant supported dentures on the bottom, which was a huge improvement. It was still a challenge. I had one patient that would break that lower denture and I put metal substrate in it, but he had so much force and didn't have a sense of how much, and he was a big guy, big jaws. It's like he'd walk into the office and I knew that he had broken his denture again. And I'm like, well, what are you eating? What are you doing?
Angus Walls:
Which bag of bolts are you eating this time? Yeah, yeah.
I've been there in the same place.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
So the diet in elderly people, and that's a challenge as well.
Angus Walls:
It is. And part of what I spent the last, I guess 10 to 15 years trying to do is first of all to try to get dentists to realize that yes, you can make somebody new prosthesis, but if you don't at the same time intervene with them and say, why don't you try some of the foods that you couldn't previously chew? They won't change. And they won't change because now the very often the patient that you're working for isn't the one who does the cooking or the shopping or whatever and that's all habit. And so you don't get that innovation unless you trigger that innovation. And just trying to get dentists to realize the importance of doing that and the importance of the need for different dietary advice in older people.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
I don't know what it's like in the UK, but in the US it's like we were never trained to talk about diet with our patients as dentists. Right?
Angus Walls:
Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
And sadly, neither are the physicians. We have a health crisis in the US, not a healthcare crisis. We have a health crisis. And I think a lot of it's diet, I mean you trace that obesity right back to... And then obesity and then you talk about hypertension and heart disease and cancer and diabetes, you just goes down the list. I mean, you just check every box as you go down. And all of that comes back to diet. And I think most dentists aren't comfortable talking about diet. For me to sit down and go, Angus. So tell me what your average day is like and what kind of foods you eat? Well, number one, we don't get paid for that.
Angus Walls:
Newcastle was the first dental school in the UK to appoint a lecturer in nutrition science, and that's Paula Moynihan, who was two iterations after me as president of IDR, but was in Newcastle for a long time. And hence I suppose some of our focus on diet and health. So I'm probably more comfortable talking about diet than most are.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Yeah. Yeah, I would think so.
Angus Walls:
And more aware of what you should be talking to the average 70-year old about. Which isn't about, you know, because you've got to reduce your calorie intake because you haven't got as much muscle, so you don't need as much as many calories, but you still need to maintain the same amount of micronutrients. So you need a nutrient dense diet. And if you tell the average older person to eat less, they just do that. They eat less. And so the nutrient density isn't there.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Looking Outside of what dentists are comfortable doing to help elderly patients live better, healthier lives is one of the reasons that Angus is extraordinary. So with as many years of experience, where does Angus see dentistry in the UK in the next five years?
Angus Walls:
Huge chunks of dentistry delivered through the NHS. There's also about probably 30 to 40%, which is delivered by independent private payment. And there's a whole raft of stuff in the press at the moment about fewer and fewer dentists working for the NHS and more and more dentists working privately. And ironically, quite a lot of that has been driven by the pandemic because during the pandemic, dentists were closed down for, oh, 12 weeks. Yeah.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Three.
Angus Walls:
And then they were allowed to open with very controlled care for patients. And so they got used to spending lots of time with a patient. They got used to having time between patients. And they don't like going back to the NHS treadmill. The NHS industry is a bit of a treadmill.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
It is a- particularly in that regard. Yeah.
Angus Walls:
Yeah. I can't help but think sadly, that dentistry, as we know it in the NHS is very much on the rocks and might fade out altogether.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
With the NHS, you still have an access to caries, particularly probably in more of the rural communities.
Angus Walls:
And in places which don't have dental schools. So the dental schools in the UK aren't evenly distributed around the country.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Right. They're in the major population centers and-
Angus Walls:
Well, not even all of those. You've got in England, Newcastle, which is in the northeast, and then there's a whole swath almost in a line. So, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool, which span across the country, and then he goes south to Birmingham, and then it's Bristol and London. So there's nothing between Birmingham and London. And that's 120 miles and 200 miles out to the coast. It's a huge area.
And dentists who go to dental schools, a big chunk of them, probably close to 50 to 60% of them work within 60 miles of the dental school where they're trained. And that's a UK phenomenon. And so there are real problems with getting dentists to go and work in some of these places. And that was manageable in the UK whilst we were part of the EU because European dentists could come to work in the UK with a European dental qualification and were quite happy to do so because if you graduated in Poland or Lithuania or somewhere-
... Coming to the UK was actually quite a nice place to be and you got earned a lot of money relatively.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Oh yeah.
Angus Walls:
But they've stopped coming post-Brexit. So there were some areas of the country. And in Scottish terms, the biggest problem at the present moment is in Dumfries and Galloway. So as the chief dental officer said the other day, go up to the border on the West Coast and turn left, and there's a big swath of country, population of I guess about 500,000 people. They used to rely heavily on overseas dentists. They aren't there anymore. The local UK trained dentists who used to work at the NHS are under so much pressure to see patients that they're all moving out of NHS care because there are enough people who can afford to pay for their dental treatment, that they can have a much better lifestyle working privately with a smaller number of patients.
But that's leaving a massive problem in terms of access. But here in Edinburgh, at the present moment, we don't have an undergraduate school. We have a problem attracting people to come and work here. Beautiful city.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Oh, it is a beautiful city. One of my favorite cities.
Angus Walls:
And there is a problem with, for the last, I suppose since the pandemic, it's been just about impossible for somebody coming to Edinburgh to defined an NHS dentist. So we're now three years in, in a big urban cultivation with... How many are there? Four. Four massive universities. The whole of the civil service for Scotland, a massive population turnover and all that population turnover hasn't been able to access dental care and dentists are pulling out of the NHS.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
The problems facing dentistry and the NHS are huge and difficult to solve. It's no surprise that the time that the pandemic afforded dentists to spend with their patients was something a lot of them didn't want to give up. After many decades of service Angus is looking to officially retire from dentistry in December of 2023. So what will Angus do next?
Angus Walls:
I am going to stop being a dentist. I don't want to be people knocking on my door saying, "Can you come and do this bit of service or this patient treatment?" So I'm going to come off the dental register and stop being a dentist.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
How is that going to feel for you?
Angus Walls:
In a practical sense, for the last five years, I've done relatively little clinical dentistry, so it won't be a huge change in that sense, but it will be a change in my options. Having said that, I'm 67, my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be. I cut a crown preparation on a tooth that hadn't previously been prepared, 10 days ago, for the first time in six years.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Angus Walls:
Because the sort of work that I've been doing for the last six years has been sorting out somebody else's problems rather than new treatment.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Right.
Angus Walls:
What am I going to do with my time? I love cooking, so I'm going to learn to cook better. I'm going to play a lot more golf, I've just become vice captain of the golf club, which will keep me busy for a while. And I'm applying for jobs, which are called non-executive director roles. So these are people who sit on the boards of organizations who provide oversight and governance for the organization. So I'm looking for a non-exec role in healthcare. To use-
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Right. So you can take your expertise-
Angus Walls:
Yeah.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
... and help benefit just-
Angus Walls:
Well, so-
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Yeah.
Angus Walls:
... I've learned a lot in 40 years, and I think that some of that could be of use. It's just question of finding the right job in the right place. The jobs are typically notionally a day a week. In reality, probably two days a week. You get a small stipend, but they keep you interested. They keep your brain going. And the most important thing for me is my brain is as important an organ to exercise as my arms and my legs are, and keeping my brain active is going to be, I think the biggest challenge I'll face.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
I think you'll keep your brain active. I don't think you're going to just up and stop that Angus.
Angus Walls:
And I've still got some Ph.D. students ongoing, and there's other stuff that I'll be doing. I just won't be a clinical dentist. And the university here has already said to me they want me to do some consulting work and, yeah.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
So you'll have a flexible schedule and be able to call your own hours and be able to contribute and enjoy your life at the same time. Angus, we've covered a lot of topics and I thank you for being open and talking about all this.
It's interesting as I interview more and more people and I'm learning more and more and looking at common threads between people, the question I come up with, do you think extraordinary is innate? Do you think extraordinary people were born that way with that internal clock and drive, or do you think it's something that you can learn or is it something that, is it a place where you make a conscious decision to take your life?
Angus Walls:
I don't think I've ever deliberately made a conscious decision to do something extraordinary, because I wouldn't, until you asked me to do this interview, have ever thought of myself or anything that I've done as extraordinary. But that's just me being British. I think my father was an extraordinary person. And so I lived with an extraordinary person for the first 25 years of my life. You learn by example, if nothing else. I said my father was a GP, but he did a degree in chemistry starting in 1938. Along came the second war, they accelerated the chemistry program. So he finished a three-year degree in two years. He then went into the UK Navy. He was a pilot in the fleet air arm and flew all the way through the war of the 47 people in his fight school, two survived.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
So you're lucky just to be here.
Angus Walls:
I'm lucky to be here.
And then he went off and did medicine, and he became this extraordinary servant to his patients. And that was one exemplar for me. And the other exemplar, I think I talked about John Murray as a mentor and just John's work ethic and his ability to recognize the talents of others.
And it's strange you asked me about mentors and the people who had a strong influence in my life, but some of the people who've had a strong influence in my life, the influence has been almost the opposite. They've shown me what not to do. So one of my previous bosses who I won't give a name, he was incredibly disorganized and he was just awful to travel with because I once worked out when I was traveling with him that he had 17 pockets in his clothing, and he never knew which one he'd put his bits and pieces into. And it was all of this sort of stuff. And that was just one example of him. So I organized myself.
And another was an individual who I looked up to a lot when I was young and a junior researcher, but then became aware that he had become very arrogant and focused on what he wanted out of life, not what was best for the place that I was working and where he was in a leadership position. And I've always tried to have that element of, I suppose it's service is the word I'm looking for, to support an organization. So I came up to Edinburgh 10 years ago. The first seven years were the sort of things that you would expect. And then along came the pandemic. And I spent six months organizing and responsible for urgent dental care for a million people. I have never worked so hard in my life.
And it's probably one of the reasons why I'm, I'm really comfortable with the idea of retiring now, but I suppose I felt able to do that because of all of the stuff that was sitting in the background there. And I just thought about, frankly, I thought about what my father would've done. He would simply have rolled his sleeves up and he'd have got on with it because that was the sort of person he was.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Right. Sounds like your dad had a huge level of integrity.
Angus Walls:
When my father died, I was in the middle of doing some landscaping in the garden. And one of the things I had to do was build a stonewall. And it was quite a complex thing because you had to shape the stones to round a curve. And I was... The weekend after he passed away, I just wanted to lose myself on something so I got on with some of this. And I was working out how to cut a piece of stone, and I got out an angle grinder and I thought, oh, you, and then I thought about, hang on a second, how would dad done it? And he wouldn't have used an angle grinder. He'd used a big thing called a brick bolster, which is a three-inch wide cold chisel and with a hammer and cut round and round the stone, and eventually it cracks in the right place. And I used the brick bolster all that day, and for the next five years when I lived in that house, every time I looked at that wall, I thought to myself, that's how dad would've done it. And it was really satisfying.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. You know Angus, this that, that's really a great story, I think to wrap this up on. I thank you so much for-
Angus Walls:
My pleasure.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
... sharing your life story.
Hearing about the mentors in Angus life tells you a great deal about his character, just like his father, he's a man of integrity who forged his own path advocating for the care of vulnerable people. Thank you so much to Angus Walls at the University of Edinburgh for being a guiding light in the field. I truly believe that you'll find fulfillment and maybe a little bit of rest in your retirement.
And thank you for coming along on this journey with me today. Around here, we aim to inspire and create connections. We can't do it without you. If this conversation moved you, made you smile or scratched that little itch of curiosity today, please share it with the extraordinary people in your life. And if you do one thing today, let it be extraordinary.