Geoffrey Hugh Smerdon

Geoffrey Hugh Smerdon

General practitioner Liskeard, Cornwall, 1956-96 (b Dorchester 23 September 1926; q The London Hospital 1949; FRCGP, MBE), d 14 September 2005.

The son of a general practitioner, Geoffrey Smerdon qualified from The London Hospital in 1949, and served as a medical officer with the Royal Air Force in Southern Rhodesia before dedicating his life to general practice, training, and research in Cornwall. Elected a fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and awarded an MBE, Geoff continued his research into alcoholism after retirement in 1996 and, despite illness, completed a joint final paper on his System for Staging Drinkers a month before his death.

As his colleague in general practice Tony Piper put it so well at Geoff’s funeral: “Geoff was a great teacher and doctor. He never passed by an opportunity to instruct, encourage, or to help anybody, whoever that person might be. He will be much missed, but not so much, if all who remember him follow his example, and enjoy everything.”

Geoffrey Hugh Smerdon was born in Dorchester, the youngest son of GP Edgar Wilmot Smerdon. After being educated at Weymouth College Junior School and winning a full scholarship to Epsom College, Geoff entered The London Hospital in 1944.

Intent on following his father into general practice, Geoff started equipping himself with the necessary broad medical experience for six months as house physician in the paediatric department of St John’s Hospital, Lewisham, and house surgeon at United Cambridge Hospital for four months before leaving for Africa on national service to become unit medical officer at RAF Kumalo in Southern Rhodesia for 20 months.

The principal medical officer of the Rhodesian Air Training Group noted that Flt. Lt. Smerdon’s duties included “the medical care of RAF personnel, of their dependents and of African troops and their dependents. In this work care of dependents has predominated. Thus he has been engaged in extensive, variegated general practice with the added experience of those conditions endemic among a native population. He is deservedly popular with his patients, in whose welfare he takes a deep interest.”

In Southern Rhodesia, he met Dorothy Ann Taylor, then 17, who was to become his foremost supporter for the rest of his life. They were married in London in 1954.

On his return to England, he continued his extensive hospital experience as house paediatrician and house surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, and house surgeon in the obstetrical and gynaecological departments and senior house officer in casualty at Plymouth South Devon and East Cornwall Hospital at Freedom Fields.

He then completed a year’s general practice with noted GP pioneer R M S McConaghey of Dartmouth. Dr McConaghey was a member of the foundation council of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and Geoff continued this interest himself. He was later elected a fellow of the College, and subsequently provost of its Tamar Faculty covering Cornwall and Devon. He was heavily involved in devising the college scheme for awarding fellowship by assessment for experienced GPs, and in the running and teaching of the vocational training scheme for new GPs based in Plymouth.

Geoff joined the Dean Street Surgery in the small market town of Liskeard, Cornwall, in 1956 and became senior partner in 1973. He finally retired in March 1996 aged 70.

As well as his lifetime in practice, he was engaged in research work of national, and possibly international significance, on helping people with alcohol addiction. In relation to this, he was chairman and medical director of the Cornwall Alcohol and Drugs Agency from 1980 to 2001, and was awarded the MBE for services to medicine in 1994.

The welfare of his patients included all aspects of their life in the community. Geoff was a member of the Liskeard Abbeyfield Society from 1975, and eventually their president. He was able to serve, and encourage service in others, as a founder member of the Rotary Club of Liskeard and Looe. He used Rotary as founder of the Community Action Group, of which he was chairman, to campaign for a new Liskeard Hospital. This complemented years of lobbying as a doctor, and was rewarded in 2004 when he opened Liskeard Community Hospital, where he was to die from cancer a year later.

A strong believer in interpreting non-verbal communication from patients during consultations and a pioneer in using tape recordings to analyse doctors’ behaviour, Geoff above all spent time with his patients. He also put in additional hours each working day and night helping them with the emotional and social consequences of their and their partners’ health problems.

He and Dorothy had their own sadness too. Their first daughter, Sarah Jane, died aged five from what was later found to be Reye’s syndrome. When work in the United States showed that the condition is linked to aspirin, Geoff took the lead and his practice was the first in the United Kingdom to ban its use with young children.

Despite a long period of illness after his official retirement, Geoff just kept working, particularly on his System for Staging Drinkers, which was used by the Cornwall Alcohol and Drugs Agency until it had amassed a goldmine of data from more than 55 000 consultations with 9000 drinkers. With a Medical Research Council grant, the results were analysed by the Data Mining Group at the University of Durham, which found nine stages of behaviour and predicted movement between stages with 85% accuracy. In August, he and Jane Doggart completed a 4000-word definitive summary of the system.

Perhaps typically, Geoff’s system for staging drinkers had a place for everyone—even those with whom contact was lost because of recovery, drop-out, or even death.

He leaves his wife, Dorothy; two sons and a daughter; and five grandchildren. [Peter Smerdon, Tony Piper]