Andrew Richardson

Andrew Kenneth Richardson was born in Point–A-Pierre, Trinidad on the 7^th of September, 1948 to a well known thoracic physician and surgeon Dr Ken Richardson and his wife Margaret. He attended St Mary’s College in Port of Spain after winning a government exhibition and later went to the University of the West Indies, Mona to study medicine. Up to this point Andrew enjoyed sports and making sport but showed little interest in academics much to his father’s chagrin. This continued into his first year at university. Things started to change when he performed badly at his 2^nd MB exams and there was a good chance that he would be thrown out of medical school. He realised that he had to put his extracurricular activities on hold and beat book. Here he demonstrated his early management skills and brought all the students in his position together, organized group sessions and tutorials. He along with the entire group moved on up to the hospital after passing his supplemental exams with honors marks to boot. The hospital is where he met the love of his life and I am not referring to Trona, she came later. I am referring to clinical medicine. The realisation that you could take a history, carry out a clinical examination and like a clever detective make a diagnosis and therefore treat people was exhilarating. He found it so engaging he could hardly keep away from the hospital. After a rotation with Henry Shaw at KPH he realised that surgery was what he wanted to do. He graduated in 1974, married Trona in 1975 and returned to Trinidad to do his internship at Port of Spain General Hospital. He quickly headed off to Ottawa where he and Trona specialized and had their two children Andrew Kagan and Celine. They returned to Trinidad in 1981 where he worked for the university firm initially under Professor Butler and then ran the firm along with Vijay Narangsingh. Andrew has always been a keen sailor as anyone who knows him will tell you. Luckily for St Lucia the sailing was excellent and they needed a surgeon. After a year’s sabbatical in St Lucia the family settled there. Things at the Victoria hospital in Castries were very different then and Andrew was often found fixing beds, giving extra life to bits of surgical equipment and finding cost effective ways to solve problems. With Andrew the Victoria Hospital offered progressively higher and higher levels of care. I was thrilled to know that I would be working with him when I joined the surgical staff in 1996 and over the years I have benefitted from his tremendous collegial support. As Professor Butler once said to me “Andrew has good hands”. I have enjoyed working with him and learning from him. He has always been a keen teacher and was responsible for starting the Wednesday teaching rounds in 1988 which continue to this day. Providing service in a government hospital has its frustrations and Andrew realised along with others that there was a need for a private facility. Before embarking on this project he equipped himself with an MBA from the business school at Cave Hill Barbados and in 1989 formed a group which would be responsible for Tapion Hospital which opened its doors in 1997 and is now the few accredited hospitals in the Caribbean.

At the inaugural meeting of the Caribbean College of Surgeons in Trinidad in 2003 Andrew was made its first secretary and he played a key role towards the early development of the college and in particular setting up its initial web site.

This recognition is for the tremendous work you have done for the College especially when it was at a formative stage and also for your contribution to the advancement of surgery in the Caribbean and St Lucia in particular.