Dr George Jamieson Ross McHardy BM, BCh, FRCPE, FRCP
Born 17th November 1930, Edinburgh
Died 29th March 2024, in Edinburgh, aged 93, of pneumonia.
A Scottish chest physician and physiologist who trained in Oxford and London, developed his interests during National Service in the RAF and at the Hammersmith Hospital, and returned to Edinburgh where he introduced clinical lung function services and played a key role in the restructuring of the city’s NHS.
Neither of Ross McHardy’s parents was a doctor, but his father died when he was 10 and his maternal aunt Christa, Public Health officer for West Lothian, became a formative influence. An outstanding scholar, after early schooling in Linlithgow and Stirling, Ross won open scholarships to Wellington School and then Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating BA and added a BSc in physiology. His clinical studies were in London at the Middlesex Hospital, during which time he published two papers from his physiology research and won most of the prizes, before graduating with the Oxford MB in 1957.
His house posts at the Middlesex were with the physician, Evan Bedford, and then in casualty and obstetrics (during which added the Diploma in Obstetrics to his qualifications). He was called for National Service in the RAF, as a flight lieutenant. For many in 1960 this might have proved tedious, but Ross was well-placed in the Farnborough unit researching high altitude decompression and the effects of hypoxia. This was his introduction to lung physiology, and a series of papers in international journals followed.
In 1961 he passed the London MRCP and obtained a registrar post at the Hammersmith Hospital, later being promoted to tutor at the Postgraduate Medical School to work with Moran Campbell and RS Jones, two of the leading figures in lung physiology at the time. Further papers followed on exercise tolerance and regulation of breathing, work that continued with Richard Riley during a year’s International Postdoctoral Fellowship from the US Public Health Service in 1964/5, at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
This was a time of change in chest medicine, which was moving from tuberculosis care to an interest in understanding and managing impairment of lung function, asthma and chronic obstructive diseases. Prof John Crofton in Edinburgh saw the opportunities and the need for a clinical physiologist and in 1965 Ross, already recognised as a national expert, was appointed to this new consultant post at the City Hospital and to a senior lecturer post in Edinburgh University.
Over this period in the late 1960s and 1970s, Ross developed a standardised a lung function service across the city’s main hospitals, including the early introduction of computerisation, but also as a physician he played a full role on in teaching and in the care of chest patients at the City Hospital. His research necessarily became less fundamental, being directed at practical clinical issues such as rehabilitation and investigating pulmonary effects of different diseases and treatment regimens, in collaboration with his colleagues. One important advance, widely adopted nationally, was his introduction and validation of a practical means of assessing disablement by a simple timed walking test.
Ross was notably courteous, polite and self-effacing, and had a gift for getting people to work together for the common good. In the late 1980s he was appointed Chairman of the Lothian Health Board’s Area Medical Committee. Shortly thereafter, the Health Board found itself facing a major financial challenge of around £12 million. In the absence of constructive action from the Board’s management, and with the support of the Chief Administrative Medical Officer, Helen Zealley, he hosted a series of informal evening meetings in his home for the leaders of all the medical specialties and representative general practitioners.
Together, the Group reviewed the existing range of clinical provision throughout the Area. In doing so, they identified potential options for rationalisation that could allow the transfer of underutilised services and also enable the closure of six smaller hospitals in the Area – as well as the closure of the paediatric, maternity and A&E services at the Western General Hospital and the A&E service at Roodlands in Haddington. Because these proposals had been developed by a group of senior clinicians under Ross’s Chairmanship, there was relatively little negative reaction or publicity – in striking contrast to the reaction to hospital closures elsewhere. The proposals were accepted and the changes contributed significantly to the savings required as well as to a more structured focus on specialty provision.
Aside from his academic life, Ross was a well-rounded individual, well prepared for retirement when it came. He was an accomplished pianist and organist, a yachtsman, a fly fisherman, and a devoted family man. He had married his house officer, Valentine Dewar, in 1968. Val, a general practitioner, sadly died in 2015. Their three children, Margaret, Robert and Ian, all inherited their father’s musicality and his interest in computers, all working in IT. A daughter-in-law, Alethea is a doctor. In his later years he found companionship with his good friend Gillian Sams, a fellow pianist with whom he played duets and travelled the world for musical events.