A Scottish Retreat - Loch Fyne, Bute and Iona

Richard Smith

Professor J. Richard Smith MD, DSc, FRCOG is a consultant gynaecological surgeon at the Queen Charlotte's and Hammersmith Hospitals, Imperial College NHS Trust and Honorary Consultant in Transplantation Surgery at Oxford University Hospitals. He was Adjunct Associate Professor at the New York University School of Medicine from 2001 to 2021 and is currently Professor of Practice, Imperial College.

Professor Smith graduated from the University of Glasgow and worked in various Scottish hospitals until 1988. He then moved to further his training at St Mary’s Hospital in London and took up a consultant post at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital in 1993. He is also an honorary consultant at the Royal Brompton Hospital. He moved to Hammersmith/Queen Charlotte’s Hospital a few years ago where his sub-specialisation of gynaecology is oncology, and within this he specialises in gestational trophoblastic disease, ovarian germ cell tumours, cervical cancer and vulval disease. During his career, he co invented the procedure of radical abdominal trachelectomy, and the modified Strassman procedure to allow fertility sparing surgery for woman with rare uterine tumours. He also invented the Smith’s safety needle holder. He is a registered colposcopist and has a long-running interest in the management of pelvic pain and the psychology both of his patients and of the operating theatre.

His main surgical interest is fertility-sparing surgery and his research interest is the development of uterine transplantation, both from live and deceased donors. He is the Chairman of Womb Transplant UK Charity and leader of this research team. He is an Honorary Consultant in Transplantation Surgery at the University of Oxford hospitals. He is also involved with research related to endometrial transplantation, endometrial stem cell research and novel treatments for vulval cancers.

He has a long-running interest in doctor-patient communication and has published Women’s Cancers; Pathways to Healing 2009, Women’s Cancers; Pathways to Living 2015. He is the series editor of Patient Pictures (17 books) (210,000 copies).

With respect to books for the medical profession he is First Editor of an Atlas of Gynaecological Oncology (4 editions) and first author of eight other post-graduate medical textbooks. He has over 200 peer reviewed publications as well as numerous reviews and articles.

In the field of non- medical publishing he has published two books, The Journey: Spirituality, Pilgrimage and Chant, DLT, 2016 and A Very Byzantine Journey, Sacristy Press, 2022. He currently has two new books for the general public one with his agent entitled The Sacrifices a Woman will make in Pursuit of a Baby. The other, Womb Transplant - An Epic Journey is with World Scientific Press.

He has four children whom he loves dearly and spends his time between London, where he lives on a house boat, and Scotland, where he lives at the south end of an island, in the middle of nowhere.