Dr Andrew Bamji

ANB with Kate Grimes, Chief Executive of Queen Mary's receiving his certificate for 25 years' service

Educated at Highgate School and the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, I qualified in 1973. After pre-registration posts at the Middlesex and Kettering hospital I worked at the Hammersmith and Brompton hospitals before moving to Bath as a medical registrar. I undertook my training in rheumatology and rehabilitation back at the Middlesex, with attachments to the Royal National Orthopaedic and Northwick Park Hospitals, before being appointed Consultant at Queen Mary's Sidcup and the Brook Hospital, Woolwich in 1983.

A re-organisation of sessions took me full-time to Queen Mary's in 1989. I have been Director of the Elmstead Rehabilitation Unit since 1985.

My particular rheumatology interests are the teaching of examination technique and joint injection and the clinic management of rheumatoid arthritis. Over many years I have amassed an extensive collection of interesting and representative clinical photographs and X-rays, and co-edited a slide atlas (published in book form as "Clinical Rheumatology" by Gower Medical Publishing in 1986). My e-lecture on digital photography and images in rheumatology appeared on the MSec portal early in 2005. I am currently writing podcasts for Doctors.net and assisting with the construction of their rheumatology image database.

Between 2001-2005 I authored a monthly column in "Rheumatology", writing as Robin Goodfellow (the mischievous Puck in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream).

I have always been involved in the "politics" of Rheumatology and was Chairman of the Clinical Affairs Committee of the British Society for Rheumatology from 1998 to 2001, during which time I chaired the Society's Working Party on TNF-alpha blockade in rheumatoid arthritis. I was until 2005 a member of the External Relations Committee. In April 2005 I became President-Elect of the BSR and assumed the Presidency at the Annual General Meeting of the Society in May 2006, demitting office at the end of April 2008.

While Director of Medical Education at Queen Mary's I was fortunate to discover the bulk of the First World War casenotes from the Queen's Hospital, and have lectured widely on these to medical and non-medical audiences. I have also prepared articles for the "Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine", "Current Anaesthesia and Critical Care" and "Trauma", and contributed a chapter on facial injury to Huch Cecil and Peter Liddle's book "Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced" (Pen & Sword Books, 1996). I was Gillies Lecturer and Gold Medallist (jointly with Brian Morgan, BAPRAS archivist) at the BAPRAS Annual Meeting in 2006. I have appeared in a number of television programmes about surgery and the Great War and co-curated an exhibition, "Faces of War" at the National Army Museum, Chelsea, in 2007-8.