Life in Her Hands: The Inspiring Story of a Pioneering Female Surgeon

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Born in 1937, Averil studied at Liverpool University’s School of Medicine and graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine in 1960. Averil began her career at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital before becoming a lecturer in surgery at the University. She later become consultant vascular surgeon at St Mary’s hospital in London. There was one man in my clinic at St Mary’s with an aortic aneurysm who stripped naked and laid on the couch for me to examine him,” recalls Mansfield. “Afterwards I said: ‘Put your clothes on and we’ll have a chat’ and he said: ‘When will I see Professor Mansfield?’ Mansfield’s reputation was such that Estée Lauder and John Mortimer, of Rumpole of the Bailey fame, were among her celebrity patients. She had the honour of being a guest on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 2020, which led to her being asked to write her new autobiography, Life In Her Hands. My mother thought I was being ridiculous, that the daughter of a housewife and a welder living in social housing could not enter the medical profession, but finally came round to the idea when she saw I wasn’t giving up.” Although we were producing lots of female medical students, we were not producing lots of female surgeons,” says Mansfield.

Averil Mansfield books and biography | Waterstones

Pioneering surgeon blazed a trail for women in medicine, becoming the UK’s first female professor of surgery.

Mansfield retired from surgery in 2002. [4] She was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2005, and was elected president of the British Medical Association in 2009–2010. [1] In 2012 she was voted one of "100 Women Who Have Changed the World" by The Independent on Sunday. [1] Just 2% of surgeons in the UK were women when Mansfield qualified in the early Seventies. By the Nineties, when 97% of surgeons were male, not much had changed. In 1991, Women in Surgical Training (Wist) was established by the RCS to encourage women into surgery and Mansfield was its founding chairwoman. "At that time we didn't have an organisation in this college that was dedicated to encouraging women, so we began it, to show that the career and the college are open to women. That message, 'You can do it, you are not going to meet antagonism,' might be the very thing women need to hear to encourage them to try it." In the past 10 years, the number of women consultant surgeons has almost doubled; the RCS hopes that by 2009, 20% of consultants will be women. a b Hanson, Michele (31 July 2002). "First lady of the theatre". The Guardian . Retrieved 8 October 2017.

Life in Her Hands: The Inspiring Story of a Pioneering Female

Vascular surgery was fairly new when I trained in the sixties but when I watched an operation on an aortic aneurysm, I was captivated by it. I took every opportunity to develop in this area and by the time I became a consultant in 1972, I was a trained vascular and general surgeon. I did both for many years and started work at St Mary’s Hospital in the early 1980s. Women in surgery

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At 5ft 10in, Mansfield was certainly an imposing figure in the operating theatre. She excelled at every stage, scoring top marks in her surgical exams. I was expected to go down a pole into the ship to administer analgaesia before he could be rescued. a b Hunt, Liz (16 October 1993). "Professor of surgery enters a male theatre". The Independent . Retrieved 8 October 2017. On one occasion, we were responding to a man who had fallen into the hold of a grain ship and broken his leg.

Lifetime Achievement - Pride of Britain Awards

Could she be exceptional? Have other women encountered difficulties? "No, but perhaps I only meet the ones who are successful. I think the most important thing for women is to achieve the standard and not to expect any favours. If you do that, you can expect to be treated as an equal." A cynic might think that Mansfield is just saying all this because she is very keen indeed for more women to become surgeons. She is at present leading a project to build the Eleanor Davies-Colley memorial lecture theatre at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS), to celebrate and encourage women in surgery "to impress upon women that this college will welcome them". She was outraged when the Dean of St Mary’s, Professor Peter Richards, issued a statement that she was appointed “purely and only on merit”. Averil said: “It suddenly must have occurred to him, ‘Oh, perhaps everyone will think we are giving her the job because she is a woman’.”

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Her parents spent years trying to deter their headstrong daughter from pursuing an ambition sparked at the age of eight as she thumbed through medical books in her local library. Camilla was full of good humour and we spent time together in a studio afterwards, talking to TV channels, until she suddenly said: ‘I think I’d better go home now. We’ve got rather a busy week’. It was the week of Harry and Meghan’s wedding!” a b "The NHS Heroes Awards". 21 May 2018. ITV. {{ cite episode}}: Missing or empty |series= ( help) Averil Mansfield was an ambitious and talented young doctor when she announced, to a senior surgeon, her plan to marry her architect boyfriend.