Douglas MacMillan began his ENT career at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1968. He was appointed Chief Assistant to the Royal Ear Hospital, before becoming an Associate Specialist at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, where he took a particular interest in otology.
Douglas retired in 2014, and is now pursuing what he considers to be his real life’s work – musicology. He has a PhD and a DMus(RCM) in the study of historic musical instruments.

Latest Contribution


The ENT operating theatre viewed down the retrospectoscope

We learn much of our future by looking at our past; Douglas MacMillan provides us with a fascinating glimpse into his years as a junior doctor. The operating theatre was a somewhat alien environment in the late 1960s: theatre sisters...


ENT clinics – 50 years of progress…?

Cocaine in abundance, eustachian tube catheterisation, and the ever-present threat of a fire in the clinic… How have things changed in the last few decades? Retired ENT surgeon, Douglas MacMillan, tells us of his experiences starting out in the late...