A hero in Wales
A tribute to Professor Bim Bhowmick

Bim retired in February 2005 after a remarkable career. This tribute is a reflection of Bim’s career and his extraordinary life.

It outlines his early years when he triumphed over adversity; his arrival in the UK in the 60’s and then the sustained devotion to the advancement of the speciality of geriatric medicine in Wales; and in later years the recognition of this contribution through a number of significant awards – most recently the award of a personal chair by the University of Wales.

The early years and the ‘great escape’
As the second youngest of ten children, Prof Bimal Bhowmick overcame terrible hardship and poverty as a young man to fulfil his dream of becoming a doctor.

The Indian province of East Bengal (now Bangladesh) erupted into civil unrest and religious rioting in the 1940’s and Bim Bhowmick’s terrified family fled the violence that had encroached onto their very doorstep. After their dramatic escape the refugee family settled in West Bengal, near Calcutta where, soon after, he lost his father to a treatable illness. The family were simply too poor to pay for proper medical care.

Education was fee paying in India at that time, and the family had no hope of affording the school fees. Learning of his plight, a wealthy businessman, (the father of one of his friends), gave him the start he needed by paying for the first year. He took up the challenge, knowing that his only way forward was to stay ‘top of the class’ and to win the annually awarded scholarship for progression to the next school year.

Sustaining this year after year through sheer single-mindedness and extraordinary effort, (he could not even afford to buy text books, pencils and papers), Bim stayed at the top of his class right through school and maintained this position until he qualified as a doctor in 1963.

After senior house officer posts in Calcutta Medical College, he did his postgraduate MD degree in 1968. It consisted of research for two years, writing a thesis and sitting a full-blown examination comprised of theory and a rigorous clinical case-based practical examination.

Arriving in the UK and his contribution to Wales
After marrying Aparna, his wife of 35 years, Bim came to the UK in 1969. He trained in Blackpool as an SHO then moved to Dudley in the West Midlands as medical registrar. In 1974 he took up a new challenge to specialise in geriatric medicine and obtained a senior registrar post in North Wales where he had to learn all aspects of geriatric medicine within one year. He was offered a new second consultant’s post in HM Stanley Hospital, St Asaph, and decided to settle in picturesque North Wales. During his career as a consultant, he was working nearly twelve hours a day and practically seven days a week.

Bim Bhowmick’s major contribution has been the transfer of acute services from a former workhouse to a modern District General Hospital (DGH) - Glan Clwyd, acquiring 90 beds in 1994. It was a long and tremendous struggle, especially as management was determined to centralise orthopaedic services from a peripheral hospital to respond to the internal market.

He had a special interest in stroke care from an early stage and developed a DGH complex-based modern stroke rehabilitation unit with excellent facilities (1989). This became a stroke demonstration centre for Wales, helped by his colleagues. He created the first family stroke support workers in the UK, primed by the Stroke Association and first Stroke Club in Wales in the early eighties. The enthusiasm and pioneering vision he brought to these projects would come to characterise the second part of his career.

Pioneer in academic geriatric medicine
In collaboration with Bangor University, Bim went on to initiate the first diploma course in Stroke rehabilitation for multidisciplinary teams in the UK, together with the first MSc course with a local polytechnic for nurse practitioners. During the mid-eighties he pioneered the medical/clinical audit and steered its expansion to the whole of Wales.

Displaying his customary forward thinking Bim created an academic department in geriatric medicine, the first of its kind in a UK DGH, and this academic department is now a satellite of the Professorial Unit in Cardiff. He also established the first ‘Home from Hospital’ scheme in Wales with the Red Cross, facilitating planned discharge of older patients. Five years ago he created the Stroke Interest Group and the Welsh Stroke Bulletin, which now plays a significant role in developing All Wales Stroke Services.

Bim has been at the forefront of the organisation and delivery of postgraduate education and training, both locally and throughout the whole of Wales for the last two decades. He chaired the Welsh Standing Committee on postgraduate medical education for nine years and shaped the infrastructure under which a modernised system of training and education has flourished.
In recognition of his significant contribution the University of Wales College of Medicine honoured Bim by awarding an Honorary Fellowship in 2003, the first of its kind in the history of the College. He has played his role at the centre of The Royal College of Physicians (London), as the first elected ethnic councillor and the first ever Censor from Wales. He was the first ethnic MRCP examiner and now acts as a Nominated Visiting Examiner. He helped to establish the RCP Ethnic Minority Committee, which he now supports and chairs.

Bim has been a loyal member of the British Geriatrics Society since 1974, having served as Councillor and member of the Executive Committee, Secretary and Chair of the Welsh BGS and father figure for over a decade. He has championed the cause of Welsh geriatricians, who hold him in the highest esteem. He has helped and advised the Welsh Office and now the Welsh Assembly on the development of geriatric services. He managed the specialist registrar training programme in geriatric medicine (which is North Wales based) for nine years as Programme Director, and played a central role in the All-Wales Specialty Training Committee.

In recognition of his contribution to geriatric services Bim was awarded the OBE in the millennium year. He has been instrumental in the success of a significant number of distinction awards for geriatricians in Wales. He has been the Associate Postgraduate Dean since 1997, for overseas doctors, and has lately taken on the mantle of project leader for Refugee doctors in Wales, taking them through the re-qualification process. He was Clinical Director for Care of the Elderly and lately of Integrated Medicine at Glan Clwyd hospital for thirteen years.

Bim is retiring as consultant geriatrician in February 2005, but will continue as Associate Postgraduate Dean. Welsh geriatricians, Welsh geriatric services and Postgraduate Education facilities owe him a huge debt of gratitude and on behalf of all these and the rest of the British Geriatrics Society, our good wishes continue to go with him into this new chapter of a remarkable life of service.

Ed Wilkins
Chair, Cymru/Wales Council