Ross Kerridge is Senior Staff Anaesthetist at the John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle, Australia and Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle.
Dr Kerridge has had a long-standing interest in the clinical, organisational and system issues of perioperative patient management. From 1989, Dr Kerridge pioneered the establishment of the “Perioperative System” model of care for elective surgery (whilst he was working at Liverpool Hospital in Sydney, Australia). This is now the generally accepted model of elective surgical patient care in Australia, and has been adapted internationally. He continues this interest through active involvement in groups such as the ANZ Perioperative SIG, SPAQI, and as an Associate Editor of the journal Perioperative Medicine.
He has attended and spoken at numerous international conferences and meetings, but feels to understand the realities of clinical medicine, there is no substitute for seeing what really happens ‘on the ground’. In pursuit of this, he has clinically visited over 150 hospitals and health services in twenty countries.
Dr Kerridge has had wide involvement in a variety of other projects involving reorganisation and re-engineering of health service delivery, including establishment of the first ‘Medical Emergency Team’ (1990).
Early in his specialist career, he worked with the ‘Careflight’ Helicopter Medical Retrieval Service. After an accident during this work he sustained multiple life-threatening injuries, and spent six months in hospital. This experience gave him unique insights into the patient’s experience of hospitals and health services, and increased his commitment to improving the health system.
