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Date: 22 May 2012
Time: 17:19
Pioneering Birmingham surgeon knighted
Story posted/last updated: 31 December 2010
A consultant at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) is to be knighted in the New Year’s Honours List for his services to the Armed Forces.
Keith Porter, the UK’s only Professor of Clinical Traumatology, has been at the forefront of developing world-class treatment for injured military servicemen and women over the past 10 years.
Professor Porter said: “It is a great honour to be recognised in this way. I am privileged to be the civilian lead for a service that is highly tuned and fully engaged in the care of injured soldiers. However, I am just one of a number of people who have helped improve the quality of care for patients through evidence-based learning, innovation and multi-disciplinary team working. They deserve great credit too.
“I am proud of the efforts of the military and NHS teams that work side-by-side to deliver excellent outcomes for patients who had previously non-survivable injuries.
“And this experience of treating military patients, with extremely complex injuries, has also had a positive impact on the care of our NHS patients, with improved survivability and more rapid recovery, particularly in polytrauma cases.”
Prof Porter, 61, who is married and has four children, trained at St Thomas’ Hospital in London in the 1970s before being jointly appointed at the Birmingham Accident Hospital and Selly Oak Hospital in April 1986. He was awarded a professorship by University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB), the University of Birmingham and the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in 2005.
Professor Porter said: “In a lot of our work today, especially with the military, we are seeing some very complex wounds and we are having to institute management that isn’t in the textbooks. And that’s because the wounds themselves are not in the conventional textbooks.
“We’re very much at the forefront of how such wounds are managed. The experience here at UHB is absolutely unique in the UK. A lot of the improved skill-base and wider knowledge is now being implemented in civilian practice. This means we’re now giving a much better level of service.
“From my own personal point of view, I’ve always had a commitment to trauma care in its totality and trauma surgery. I have been fortunate enough to have had increasing involvement with the treatment of military personnel.
“I was involved in looking after patients in the first Gulf War and without a doubt the whole aspect of military care, from the point of wounding to ultimate discharge and rehabilitation, is now so much better.
“Our patients come back here now, about 36 hours post-injury, invariably in the best possible physiological condition they can be.
“In many cases, the complexities of their injuries, compared with the first Gulf war, are so much greater – and many of them are surviving.”
Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity funds equipment, research and training which is over and above that which the NHS provides and aims to make a difference to the lives of patients, visitors and staff at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB). To find out more about the charity, please visit their website.
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