Dr Andrew Bamji

Dr Andrew Bamji was a Consultant Rheumatologist at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, Kent and Director of the Elmstead Rehabilitation Unit there. Appointed in 1983, initially also to the Brook General Hospital, Woolwich, he undertook various management roles and had a particular interest in efficient clinic management and the early treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. From 2006-8 he was President of the British Society for Rheumatology, having undertaken various committee roles for the Society, and during that period was also a member of Council of the Royal College of Physicians. He has published and presented widely on rheumatology topics, co-authoring “An Atlas of Clinical Rheumatology” (Gower Medical Publishing, 1983) and, as Robin Goodfellow, writing a much-lauded column for the BSR journal “Rheumatology” for five years. He retired from the NHS in 2011 and from private practice in 2014 but has continued to contribute to the NHS debate through the British Medical Journal and letters to “The Times”.

He is also an expert on medicine and surgery of the First World War, having developed an interest as the hospital’s archivist, when he discovered and recovered the wartime case files of 2500 facial injury patients treated at Sidcup. His book “Faces from the Front” (Helion Press) was released in September 2017 and won first prize in the “Basis of Medicine” category of the BMA Book Awards 2018. He has appeared on television with, among others, Michael Palin, Jeremy Paxman and Michael Portillo, and lectured nationally and internationally; he has twice been awarded the Gillies Gold Medal by the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons, of which he is an honorary member.

Andrew writes an occasional blog “The Wry Observer”, which can be found at https://bamjiinrye.wordpress.com.