Dr John Baird Gibson

Personal Details

Dr John Baird Gibson  MB ChB FFARCS DA

30/06/1923 to 26/10/1988

Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland

Nationality: British

CRN:  732875

Education and qualifications

Professional life and career

Postgraduate career

Following medical school Gibson undertook his house officer posts at the Western Infirmary Glasgow and the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. He became an anaesthetic registrar at the Sunderland Royal Infirmary and Newcastle General Hospital. He remained in Newcastle for his Senior Registrar training at the General Hospital and Children’s Hospital. He published an article about anaesthesia for cardiac catheterisation in 1953.

At the relatively young age of 30 he was appointed as a Consultant  to the Ashington Hospital, Northumberland and several small hospitals comprising the Wansbeck Hospital Group. Over the next 15 years John with a few consultant colleagues was tirelessly involved in the development of the hospital service in East Northumberland, finally achieved in 1968 with the development and opening of the Ashington District General Hospital. Emergencies hitherto had often been obstetric cases at the small outlying units with  the duty anaesthetist often resuscitating the baby alongside the anaesthetised mother.

Dr Baird took early retirement in 1985 aged 62, because of health reasons having been diagnosed with pulmonary alveolar fibrosis five years earlier.
 

Professional interests and activities

In addition to his clinical responsibilities Dr Gibson undertook multiple  management and advisory committee roles during his consultant career, chairing several of these. He had a keen interest in British Medical Association affairs. He was three times chairman of the Morpeth (subsequently Mid-Northumberland) Division and was for a time a northern representative on the BMA Central Committee for Hospital Medical Services.

He was a founding member and past president (1973-4) of the North of England Society of Anaesthetists.

Other biographical information

In the  BMJ obituary Dr Gibson is described as essentially a shy and modest person but an ever reliable colleague and loyal friend. Unfortunately due to his health,  which had resulted in his early retirement, he was unable to enjoy life as he would have liked. Nevertheless he found pleasure in his garden and travelling abroad accompanying  his wife whilst she was lecturing, often arranging to meet former anaesthetic colleagues. His hobbies included golf, fishing and walking.

John’s immediate family were all medically qualified. His wife Agnes Stark, a fellow student whom he married in 1951, was for several years the director of the pioneering breast diagnostic unit at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead. His two sisters, who were twins and  born in 1927, also became medical doctors. Stella was a District Medical Officer in Glasgow and Iris a Consultant Geriatrician.
His father William was a general practitioner in Paisley who died as a consequence of enemy action during a bombing raid during WW2 in 1941 when an aerial parachute mine fell on a First Aid Post in Paisley killing 92 people where Dr Gibson senior  was the senior medical officer. John died aged 65 years, survived by his wife, a son Robert (a chartered accountant), daughter-in-law Susan and two grand-daughters.
 

Author and sources

Author:

Dr Innes Simon Chadwick

Sources and comments:

College biographical “Boulton Form” started by John Baird and then completed and submitted by his wife Agnes in 1990.
Bibliographic information sourced from ancestry.com.
Obituary John Baird Gibson, BMJ 1988; 297 (17 December): 1603.
Obituary  Stella Gibson BMJ 2020; 370: (4 August): 3039.
Obituary Agnes M Stark BMJ 2011;343:d5069.
Gibson JB. Anaesthesia for Cardiac Catheterisation and Angiocardiography.
Anaesthesia 1953; 8: 269-74.