COMMON SENSE AND EVIDENCE: Celebrating Forty Years, #246 for Sunday, February 10th, 2008
The School of Clinical Medicine and Research is preparing to “graduate” into a full faculty, admitting first year students to the full five year medical programme (the MBBS) in September. Meanwhile, it’s celebrating 40 years of medical teaching in Barbados, at the QEH.
For me, it’s been a tremendous privilege and joy not only to have been able to return and give my life’s work to my alma mater, but to share in the pleasure of this year’s celebrations and the challenges of our new course, as we become a full faculty.
We decided that the best way to celebrate such a major event would be to identify 40 people who had made a major contribution to the School. Awardees were nominated by members of the School Board, and senior members of the School “community” with historical memory for the early days of the programme. They were all invited to put forward up to 40 of those who they felt had contributed most to the School. In fact more than 50 were nominated, so we called them “40 plus”! And indeed, many, many more than 40 people have contributed greatly to the work of the School, so we apologise sincerely for any significant, but accidental omissions of those who may have done just as much in their own quiet, dedicated way, and we acknowledge, praise and thank all those one hundred and forty others who have taught, funded, supported and encouraged.)
And so a splendid University style Awards Ceremony was held at Sherbourne on Wednesday, graced by Chairman of Campus Council, Sir Neville Nicholls, Vice-Chancellor Professor Nigel Harris, and Deputy Principal Professor Leo Moseley. Leading the list of honorees were the foundation deans and other faculty, and two students from the very first class of ’67 - 68 – Dr. Marjorie Holding-Cobham and Dr. Trevor Golding,
Top of the list was the late Dr. the Honourable Harold McDonald Forde, a passionate cricket and bridge enthusiast, who was the first lecturer in the Department of Medicine at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Jamaica in 1952. He came home as Consultant Physician at the old General Hospital, became Medical Superintendant, and then the first Lecturer in Medicine and Associate Dean, when medical teaching was established here in 1967. He served until 1973, and retired in 1978. He was then made Barbados High Commissioner – the first doctor in that role… so he might be said to have earned a Triple First!
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