A leading general practitioner in Oxford, Ann McPherson, who has died from cancer aged 65, was devoted to demystifying medicine. She helped doctors and patients understand each other better, broke down the barriers between doctors, patients and the public at large, and found ways for people to look after themselves. As a champion of patients' rights, Ann was outstanding.
Her goal was to make patients' "health journeys" more bearable, often on the basis of her own experience of illness. Her output was prolific. She wrote, co-authored or edited some 32 original papers and more than 20 books – some for doctors, some for a lay readership.
Diary of a Teenage Health Freak (1987), written with Aidan Macfarlane, has been translated into 25 languages and sold more than 1m copies. She was a regular writer of newspaper articles and broadcaster, notably on Woman's Hour on Radio 4. Among the websites she founded were www.teenagehealthfreak.org and www.healthtalkonline.org, for learning about patients' experiences of their treatment for more than 60 conditions. It was based on original research carried out by a group founded by her at Oxford University's department of primary health care.
Ann was born and brought up in north London, the single child of Max and Sadie Egelnick, who were sociable, secular, Jewish communists. For a short time, Ann, too, was a member of the Communist party, but while remaining strongly committed to socialist ideals, never joined another party. Although she did well at Copthall county grammar school, Mill Hill, her politics and gender made it difficult for her to win a place to study medicine. Ultimately she was offered one at St George's hospital, then at Hyde Park Corner in central London.
As a student, she displayed boundless energy. After a full day at college she still had time for concerts, theatre, politicking, and frequent meetings with students of like mind at the London School of Economics. Fellow medical students – of whom I was one – and teachers saw her as exceptional. She was also determined. At a time when general practice was a Cinderella subject, Ann decided that this was to be her career.
She graduated with distinction in 1968. Then, after training stints in London, Oxford and Harvard, and obtaining her membership of the Royal College of GPs, again with distinction, she was appointed as a principal in a practice in Oxford. There she worked from 1979 until 2007, when she discovered that she had pancreatic cancer. While she formally retired as a GP a year later, she continued her academic work as the medical director of the research group in the department of primary health care until a few weeks before her death.
Ann had an enormous circle of friends, and her home was a hive of activity. As a GP, she listened carefully and spoke straightforwardly. She was respected as an exceptional diagnostician, ready to fight a patient's corner with hospital consultants, and she was available to patients by phone in the evening or at weekends if they were particularly concerned. In 2000 she was appointed CBE for work relating to adolescent and women's health.
Much of Ann's work required money and teamwork. When she had ideas, her formidable capacities for persuasion came to the fore, and they will be carried forward by organisations or committees. Reflecting her own experience, the last campaign she helped establish was HPAD (Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying) aimed at securing a change in the law to allow terminally ill patients like herself to be helped to die if that was their wish. She died before that was achieved, and was angry that nothing had yet happened.
In 1968 Ann married the public health epidemiologist Klim McPherson. She is survived by him and their three children, Sam, Tess, herself a doctor, and Beth, and five grandchildren.
• Ann McPherson, general practitioner, writer and campaigner, born 22 June 1945; died 28 May 2011
