Dr Andrew G. Doughty
1979-1981 - President
1982 - Gold medal winner
Citation given by Dr Anna-Maria Rollin in 1993 on the occasion of Dr Andrew Doughty's election to Honorary Membership of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, at its Annual Scientific Meeting in Glasgow (published in Anaesthesia News, November 1993).
Andrew Gerard Doughty was born in 1916 during a Zeppelin air raid. It would seem that arriving with a bang suited him, since he qualified from St Thomas's Hospital during the next World War in 1941, having written his pathology finals during an air raid. The viva was conducted in an underground shelter.
Qualification was followed by house jobs and then a post as Resident Obstetrics Officer to the evacuated maternity unit in Woking. One of the babies he delivered was Anthony Kenny, who has gone on to become a distinguished Royal obstetrician in his own right.
War service followed, in the Far East. There was not much scope for trainee obstetricians and Andrew soon tired of general duties. He volunteered for a posting in anaesthetics and was sent to the British General Hospital in Calcutta for training. There, he says, learners emerged with one of three grades: ‘has a clue’, ‘might have a clue after further training’, or ‘will never have a clue’. Having achieved a top grade, he spent the rest of the war anaesthetising patients, a pet cocker spaniel, and cage loads of mice for the typhus research unit.
On returning to England, Major Doughty went back to St Thomas's as an anaesthetic registrar. He took and passed the DA in November 1946, when he says 10% extra marks were given to ex-servicemen. In 1948, at the inception of the National Health Service, his registrar post was regraded to senior registrar. Two years later, he was instructed to apply for the post of consultant anaesthetist in Kingston-upon-Thames.
He describes the hospital, then, as a ‘hell-hole’. With absolutely characteristic energy and determination he set about transforming it, so that by the time he retired he was running a model department in a flourishing district general hospital.
His name is associated especially with three areas of innovation. In 1957, he described a modification of the Boyle-Davis gag for adenotonsillectomy. The Doughty gag, with a split blade, (which allows use of an endotracheal tube) is in universal use to this day.
The second area of innovation was in the establishment of an intensive care unit. Convinced that patients should have access to the very best facilities wherever they happened to fall ill, he organised and ran a ten-bedded ICU, publishing an Annual Report giving statistical data, a quarter of a century before most doctors had heard of audit.
Third, drawing on his early interest in obstetrics, he was deeply involved in the evaluation and popularisation of obstetric epidural analgesia. His outstanding contribution, as with intensive care, was to take the technique into the district general hospitals. He demonstrated that it was possible to organise a safe, effective and efficient epidural service, available to all labouring mothers on request, in 'ordinary' hospitals
In 1973, he set up his famous 'epidural course' at Kingston Hospital. There was only one place on the course at any one time. The trainee spent two weeks resident in the hospital, under close personal tuition and supervision. In that more rigorous time, there was no talk of 'hours on duty'. The trainee was expected to be available day and night, for the entire fortnight. The only leisure allowed was lunch with Dr Doughty and his hospitable wife Peggy on the middle Sunday of the course.
The course was open to both anaesthetists and obstetricians. Trainees came from all over the world and places had to be booked years in advance. Dr Doughty himself said that the purpose of the course was to abolish the need for the course by teaching people to teach others.
When he retired in 1980, he turned to what has been a lifelong love - music.
Footnote: Dr Doughty generously donated his books, publications and slides to the OAA in 2005 for archiving.
Andrew Doughty died peacefully on 2 June 2013
The Telegraph Obituary 12 June 2013 (paywall)
