Clare Marx

Clare Lucy Marx CBE, DL, MBBS, PRCS is President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the first woman to hold the position. She has worked as an orthopaedic surgeon at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust since 1993.

Marx qualified in medicine from the University College London Medical School in 1977. Her surgical house jobs were in the London area and later she completed an arthroplasty training at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, USA. She became a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at St. Mary's Hospital and St Charles Hospital London with a particular interest in early surgical education. In 1993 she became clinical director of the combined A&E, Trauma & Orthopaedics and Rheumatology directorate at Ipswich Hospital. Later she chaired the LNC, the Medical Staff Committee and was extensively involved in many of the Hospitals groups for governance and new projects.She was elected to RCS Council in 2009. She was elected to the BOA Council and became President of the BOA for 2008-9. She was made Chair of the RCS invited review Mechanism in 2011. In 2013 she became associate Medical Director at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust with a special remit for revalidation and appraisal, and continues in that role having stopped active orthopaedic practice in March 2014. She became President of the College in July 2014.

After the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in the June 2016 referendum, Marx posited in an interview with The Daily Telegraph that Brexit was an opportunity to improve safety standards in the NHS by strengthening medical device legislation and language testing for non-British workers. She also felt that the European Working Time Directive which restricts working hours in the NHS needed to be relaxed to enable more hours of training. The Royal College of Surgeons of England later sent out a press release clarifying that they did not endorse a return to excessive hours for NHS workers.

• 2007 CBE for services to medicine
• 2008 Deputy Lieutenant of Suffolk
• 2016 Honorary degree from the University of Exeter for services to medicine.