He is the emeritus professor of general practice (GP) at the University of Nottingham, a past president of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), best known for his primary care research on clinical audit, significant event audit, revalidation, quality improvement programmes and his contributions to health informatics services and health politics.
He was an advisor to the National Health Service IT programme and strategic director and then chair of the board of PRIMIS, which was contracted by the NHS Information Authority to improve computerisation and data in primary care.
[1] Pringle's first job was as a registrar at the Sonning Common Practice in rural Oxfordshire, with the then honorary secretary of the RCGP, John Hasler, and with Tom Stewart, as his trainer.
[10] Together with Colin Bradley, he is credited with developing and instituting significant event audit (SEA) into primary care in the UK.
In the same paper, they described its definition as "a process in which individual episodes are analysed, in a systematic and detailed way to ascertain what can be learnt about the overall quality of care, and to indicate changes that might lead to improvements".
[20] In 2000, at the United Kingdom Conference of Regional Advisors (UKCRA conference), Pringle presented his introduction on the future of general practice, where he defined ways of evaluating GPs, including revalidation, accredited professional development, membership by assessment of performance, fellowship by assessment, trainer recognition and higher degrees.
[21] In 2003, Donald Irvine, who had previously been president of the GMC, had described that discussions around revalidation in 2000 ran largely well due to the credit of two chairmen, John Chisholm of the BMA's General Practitioner's Committee (GPC) and Pringle of the RCGP.
[36] He helps with the primary care development project at the Collingham Healthcare Education Centre (CHEC) and was also a director of QResearch.
[9] In 1995, at the annual general meeting of the RCGP, Pringle was awarded the John Fry Medal for "outstanding research in primary care by a young member".