Dr Andrew Bamji FRCP, Consultant Rheumatologist & President, British Society for Rheumatology 2006-8
Educated at Highgate School and the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, I qualified in 1973. After pre-registration posts at the Middlesex and Kettering hospital I worked at the Hammersmith and Brompton hospitals before moving to Bath as a medical registrar. I undertook my training in rheumatology and rehabilitation back at the Middlesex, with attachments to the Royal National Orthopaedic and Northwick Park Hospitals, before being appointed Consultant at Queen Mary's Sidcup and the Brook Hospital, Woolwich in 1983.
A re-organisation of sessions took me full-time to Queen Mary's in 1989. I was Director of the Elmstead Rehabilitation Unit from 1985. I retired from NHS practice in May 2011 but continue to work part-time in the private sector.
My particular rheumatology interests are the teaching of examination technique and joint injection and the clinic management of rheumatoid arthritis. Over many years I have amassed an extensive collection of interesting and representative clinical photographs and X-rays, and co-edited a slide atlas (published in book form as "Clinical Rheumatology" by Gower Medical Publishing in 1986). My e-lecture on digital photography and images in rheumatology appeared on the MSec portal early in 2005. I have created podcasts for Doctors.net and am assisting the site to build a rheumatology image library.
Between 2001-2005 I authored a monthly column in "Rheumatology", writing as Robin Goodfellow (the mischievous Puck in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream).
I have always been involved in the "politics" of Rheumatology and was Chairman of the Clinical Affairs Committee of the British Society for Rheumatology from 1998 to 2001, during which time I chaired the Society's Working Party on TNF-alpha blockade in rheumatoid arthritis. I was until 2005 a member of the External Relations Committee. In April 2005 I became President-Elect of the BSR and was President from April 2006-2008.
While Director of Medical Education at Queen Mary's I was fortunate to discover the bulk of the First World War casenotes from the Queen's Hospital, and have lectured widely on these to medical and non-medical audiences. I have also prepared articles for the "Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine" and "Current Anaesthesia and Critical Care", and contributed a chapter on facial injury to Huch Cecil and Peter Liddle's book "Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced" (Pen & Sword Books, 1996). In 2007 I was, jointly, the BAPRAS Gillies lecturer and Gold Medallist - the only non-surgeon, apart from Ivan Magill, Gillies' anaesthetist, to have been accorded the honour. I have been invited to deliver the FitzPatrick lecture at the Royal College of Physicians in April 2012.
When not writing or working I enjoy gardening, writing to "The Times" (a record 8 letters in 2004, and 62 in total) , playing the pianola, photography, holidays and antique-hunting with my wife Liz (who was a GP in Sidcup until October 2005) and children Alex and Nick. We moved to Rye, East Sussex in July 2011.
Alex has completed a doctoral thesis in history at the University of Cambridge, entitled ‘Religion and disease in Venice, 1620-1700’. Her thesis considers how religion featured in understandings of disease, and analyses interactions between patients, medical practitioners and the institutions of Church and state in the city. Her broader research interests include cultural exchange, witchcraft, space and community. She spent a year lecturing in the History Department at Glasgow University and took up a permanent Lecturer post at Leeds University in July 2008.
Nick completed an Electronic Engineering course at Southampton and is now working for Selex in Luton. Nick laid out the site design using Dreamweaver. I have edited it ever since!
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