Lorna Williamson: Medical School memories

Dr Lorna Williamson received an OBE in the New Year’s Honours list for her work for her work on the advancement of blood, stem cell and tissue donation for transplantation. She tells us about her formative years at the University of Edinburgh and how they set her on the road towards a career in transfusion medicine.

Dr Lorna Williamson has a memory of her brief tenure as a surgical house officer at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh – racing across the city in a sports car to help transport a donated kidney to the Western General Hospital.

The year was 1978 and Lorna had recently graduated from the MB ChB course at the University of Edinburgh. And while she went on to have a long and prestigious medical career spanning four decades, her memories of her formative years in Edinburgh remain vivid as ever.

“I worked for six months on a ward that did vascular surgery and renal transplantation,” she says. “It’s funny what you remember – I still can recall sitting on the passenger seat of  surgical trainee’s orange MG Midget with a cardboard box on my knees labelled ‘human organ for transplantation’. Obviously, kidneys still get transported across the country, but probably not on the knees of someone sitting in a sports car!”

During the years that followed, however, Lorna was definitely in the driving seat. Over the past 40 years, she has held positions including Reader in Transfusion Medicine at Cambridge University; Medical and Research director for NHS Blood and Transplant; and recently Director of Publishing and Engagement with the Royal College of Pathologists.

Most recently, in January 2017, she was awarded an OBE for her work for her work in the advancement of blood, stem cell and tissue donation for transplantation.

Student years

Rewind to 1971, with Lorna’s arrival from Falkirk to begin the MB ChB degree at Edinburgh. At the time, there was still a noticeable gender bias within the Medical School, with male students requiring fewer exam points than women for entry, and a quota allocating only one third of places to female students.

Teaching methods were also very different with students rarely getting access to patients until their fourth year.

“I’m sure it’s a lot more integrated now but there was a strict separation between the pre-clinical and the clinical,” she says. “Unless you signed up for a few Saturday morning sessions at the Western, you didn’t routinely see any live patients at all in the first three years.” 

“The pre-clinical part of the degree was more about the scientific basis of health and disease,” she adds. “Anatomy was taught entirely without recourse to X-rays or scans, with the legendary Professor George Romanes building up the layers with multi-coloured chalk on the blackboard.  We also learnt many biochemical pathways by heart and spent a whole year dissecting a donated body.”

Despite the lack of hands-on experience, Lorna says that those pre-clinical years helped to instil a level of scientific understanding that would later prove fruitful.

“The lack of patient contact was something that drove you on,” she says. “When you were trying to learn about bio-chemical pathways, yet again, you knew if you got through it all, you would eventually get to see patients, I also acquired a fantastic grounding in pathology, which was a life-long foundation for everything I’ve encountered since”.

Finding a path

Lorna’s specific interest in haematology didn’t emerge until the final years of her degree.

“I was initially all set for a career in pathology, having chosen that as my subject for my BSc honours year,” she says.

“I spent hours doing electron microscopy on rodent kidneys in the lab. And pathology is a wonderful career, but when I got onto hospital wards later, I realised that I enjoyed talking to and examining patients and seeing the whole picture, as opposed to just looking at it down the microscope.” 

“So when I discovered haematology during my clinical years – which in clinical practice is a mixture of seeing patients and diagnostic work in the lab – I realized it was perfect for me. So, pathology was shelved and that’s what I went into. Later on, I sub-specialised in transfusion medicine, dealing with healthy donors as well as patients.”

Lorna found the three final years of her degree particularly satisfying.

“We were now real student doctors, and had the stethoscopes and knee hammers to prove it”, she says. “These three years were wonderful. When I did postgraduate exams later, I discovered that the standard of the Edinburgh undergraduate course was in fact close to what was needed, which was a great testimony to the course.” 

So, what advice would Lorna give to medical students or those at the early stage of their career?

“I think the NHS is  having a rough time at this point,” she says. “But you’ve got to try and focus on what is great about medicine. That’s really about the interaction with the patients. You’re using everything you’ve learnt to try and help the person in front of you. Despite all the current difficulties, that mixture of science, compassion and caring remains the driving force.”

Career at a glance

Lorna Williamson qualified in Medicine (with Honours) from the University of Edinburgh, and undertook specialist training in haematology in Nottingham and Sheffield.

She was Senior Lecturer then Reader in Transfusion Medicine in the University of Cambridge for nearly 20 years, running a research group undertaking clinical trials. In parallel, she held honorary consultant posts with NHS Blood and Transplant and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, becoming NHS Blood and Transplant’s national Medical and Research Director in 2007, responsible for medical policy and research strategy.

Following her retirement from the NHS in 2016, she joined the Board of the Human Tissue Authority and became Director of Publishing and Engagement with the Royal College of Pathologists. She was a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge from 1995 till 2009, and is still keen to support young women in science and medicine.