Colin Dunkley: The Quiet Revolutionary - Epilepsy, Emotion and Working Upstream

Colin Dunkley: The Quiet Revolutionary - Epilepsy, Emotion and Working Upstream

From Only Human After All by James Thomas

March 22, 2026 · 34 min · Episode 30

About this episode

Colin Dunkley discusses his revolutionary approach to epilepsy care and the emotional aspects of diagnosis.

In this episode, we meet Colin Dunkley, a paediatrician who specialises in epilepsy. Colin didn’t choose epilepsy because he loved it - he chose it because it was being done badly and families were arriving in his clinic traumatized with nowhere to turn. Twenty years before the NHS 10-year plan talked about prevention over treatment, Colin realised he couldn’t fix epilepsy care from a clinic. He had to change the entire landscape. That meant creating national tariffs so children could be seen in specialist clinics. Building a network of paediatricians across the country. Writing training curricula. Developing courses that now run in countries around the world. And learning that sometimes leadership means making way for others - especially young people whose voices are more compelling than any professional case. We explore why kids keep you authentic, why you have to be emotionally involved to make a diagnosis in epilepsy, how stigma still haunts a condition that affects identity and control, and what it means to give your life to work that blurs into everything else. Colin also shares why he cooks without recipes, lives in fear of repeating himself, and finds refuge in the work…

People in this episode

Guest: Colin Dunkley

Topics covered

  • epilepsy
  • paediatrics
  • healthcare
  • leadership
  • emotional involvement

Keywords

  • trauma
  • prevention
  • specialist clinics
  • training curricula
  • stigma

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