Anaesthetist keeps Rotary members awake with talk
Guest speaker at this month’s Lochaber Rotary Business Lunch was anaesthetist Lester Critchley.
In an absorbing 15-minute presentation, Lester covered his long association with medicine and hospitals since starting at Sheffield medical school in 1975 through to his present post at Fort William’s Belford Hospital.
Lester recalled the 1970s and early 1980s in the UK when NHS hospitals were well staffed, morale was good and government investment kept pace with need.
By the late 1980s, however, the NHS began to see problems with industrial action and spending cutbacks.
Lester moved to New Zealand, then to Canada and the United Arab Emirates before gaining a post in the Chinese University as its anaesthetist and University Associate Professor in Hong Kong where he did general and paediatric anaesthesia and was well supported by junior staff.
In Hong Kong, with its seven million population, unless you are rich, you live in a flat without a garden. The province has 42 hospitals, three teaching hospitals and two medical schools.
Only five per cent of the government’s budget is allocated to health care, there is no specific GP training career path and care of the elderly is generally left to their children.
Lester retired from his Hong Kong post at 60 and returned to the UK where he has worked as an anaesthetist at the Belford since 2017.
On behalf of the club, retired physician and past-president John Goodall thanked Lester for his “fascinating insight into Chinese medicine and life in Hong Kong”.