Reginald A. Carpenter, BA, MB, BChir, MRCS, LRCP, MA, FRCS, FRCS(Ed), is a Jamaican born some 76 years ago in Kingston. He received his high school education at Jamaica College, his undergraduate education at Cambridge University, and later attended the London Hospital Medical School and graduated in 1954.
He returned to Jamaica in 1961 as a Senior Registrar in Surgery at the UHWI. Four years later he was appointed Lecturer in Surgery at the UWI and Consultant Paediatric Surgeon at the UHWI. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1970 and assumed the Chair in the department of Surgery in Mona in 1980.
Professor Carpenter’s contribution to Paediatric Surgery and to medical education has been outstanding. He was responsible for the establishment of a high quality Paediatric Surgical Service at the UHWI and at the Bustamante Hospital for Children and during these years was seen as the resource for treating difficult cases not only from within Jamaica but the wider Caribbean. In this regard he would also inspire a number of young doctors to become paediatric surgeons and some of them are in this audience tonight. In 1974 he became Coordinator of the then fledgling Postgraduate Surgical Programme and in 1975 was appointed the first Director of the Postgraduate Medical Education Unit in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Mona.
He has been invited as external examiner to the Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, and to the University Kebangsaan in Malaysia. He has also been examiner in both parts of the Fellowship examination of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
Consultancies have taken him to Grenada and Grand Cayman, and he has been an advisor on surgical practices to the World Health Organisation. He has been a Visiting Professor to the University of Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and to the University of Bristol.
Professor Carpenter has chaired and been a member of numerous committees and associations both within and outside of the University. These include Chairman of the Medical Committee of the UHWI and member of the Board of Management. He has been Chairman of the Specialty Board in Surgery, Member of the Editorial Board of the WIMJ, and has served as a member of the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Surgery. He has also acted as Dean of the Faculty on several occasions. Professor Carpenter is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, a Surgical Fellow of the American Academy of Paediatrics, a Member of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons, the first Overseas Member of the American Paediatric Surgical Association, a member of the Paediatric Association of Jamaica, and an active member of the Society International de Chirugia. He was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for the part he played in the success of that College’s 2nd Overseas Meeting in Jamaica in 1979. He served as President of the Association of Surgeons in Jamaica from 1978 – 1981.
On retiring from the UWI and clinical practice in 1989 he was granted the title of , Professor Emeritus and has remained with the Department of Surgery as Research Coordinator. In this role he has not only assisted with guidance and editorial support, but has also helped residents in the preparation of their casebooks. In addition, he has been of invaluable assistance in the computerization of the Department. He has examined the curriculum vitae of nearly all members of the Department, upgraded them and, in so doing, identified areas of research which he has helped bring to presentation or publication. He has been the driving force behind the annual Departmental Research Evenings which afford an opportunity particularly for the younger members of academic and residency staff to present their research.
Mr President it is in recognition of his Outstanding Contribution to the Health Services and the Advancement of Surgery in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean that the council of the Caribbean College of Surgeons has admitted Reginald A. Carpenter to be an Honorary Fellow of College and I ask you to do so in absentia.
