Dr Hilary Jones is a GP, one of the most recognisable faces of morning television and a patron of many health charities, including: The Stroke Association, and the National Rheumatoid Society. Over the years, Dr Hilary has positively used his role to raise awareness of a number of medical topics, from meningitis to the MMR vaccine.  Dr Hilary’s next foray will see him launch medical apps in 2012 and a new book in 2013, while continuing to reassure the audience of Daybreak and Lorraine, as the programme’s resident doctor and health editor.

As one of the country’s most recognisable faces of morning television, what has been the most positive aspect of your role as a TV doctor?
It’s particularly worthwhile when we make a tangible difference to the lives of viewers. For example, when we did the campaign to raise awareness of the rash that you sometimes experience with meningitis and septicaemia, we had lots of people calling in to say, ‘Thank you to the programme. If I hadn’t watched Daybreak I wouldn’t have recognised the signs of the rash and doctors have told us that if we hadn’t got our child to hospital when we did, we might have lost them.’ That, for me, is a fantastic use of TV, when it potentially saves lives.

What was it that prompted you to become a TV doctor in the first place?
I’d been practicing as a GP for a while and I was good at getting across health messages to patients on a one-on-one basis. On TV you can get across important health messages to millions of people in one easy hit – for me, that’s a powerful thing to be able to do. I thought, as I was good with patients, I could use the same skills to get across messages to a far bigger audience.

You first became the resident doctor of TVAM in 1989 and have been with the station ever since. How did this role come about?
I wrote to the company and said, ‘Give me a job!’ TVAM were using many different [health] specialists who would sometimes talk in medical jargon, which doesn’t necessarily translate to the viewer. It was my idea to use one doctor in the family of presenters as the resident doctor to cover a different health story each day. Luckily, that coincided with the views of the managing director at the time and he asked me to come in for a few weeks for a trial. Fortunately, it worked out and 23 years later, I’m still here.

What health stories cause the biggest reaction among viewers of the show?
The stories we’ve received the biggest response to have included the meningitis story, guidelines on cosmetic surgery, the truth about gastric banding, resuscitation of babies and the more controversial ones such as getting to the bottom of MMR, which we now know isn’t linked to autism, and what parents need to know about other vaccines available to their children. I’ve also been thrilled to have been involved with stories in Sierra Leone to bring meningococcal vaccines to under fives and going to Kosovo during the war in the ‘90s to look at the health problems caused there. More recently I had the chance to go to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. We will receive messages after a show from viewers saying how they really enjoyed the show or maybe a few months later, thanking us as we’d somehow made a difference to their life.

How involved are you with deciding on what health and medical topics to cover on Daybreak?
I’ll suggest topics that I think will be popular and the editors will look at what subjects are topical on that particular day. At the moment, the breast implant scandal is what’s topical. For me, the most important thing is how we can help our viewers – so with the breast implant story it’s to explain things like what to do if this is happening to you, where to go and what steps to take. Whereas the newspapers will focus on how many people it is affecting and who is to blame, which doesn’t necessarily help the audience. We do react to news too, but it’s also important for me to cover those subjects that aren’t necessarily the most exciting, but important messages to get across to viewers, such as when did you last have a smear test, or get your cholesterol or blood pressure checked. The sudden death of a celebrity or health problems with members of the Royal family can also dictate what we cover on the show. Prince Philip’s recent ill-health over the Christmas period meant we focused on coronary heart disease.