Professor Fritz Berry

Dr Peter Stoddard gave the citation on behalf of Professor Fritz Berry

‘Fritz is a ‘University of Virginia man’. He obtained both undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Virginia in 1955 and 1959, respectively. He completed residencies in paediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco in 1962 and in anaesthesia at the University of Virginia in 1966. He then joined the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Virginia, where he has remained for the past 42 years. During this time he been instrumental in putting the University of Virginia on the North American anaesthesia map, both for the quality of service it provides for patients but also the high calibre of anaesthesiology residents it produces. Fritz is an educator whose wise advice and opinion is widely sought and certainly freely given! Fritz has authored two renowned paediatric anaesthesia textbooks, and I’d like to quote the dedication written in 1993 for Pediatrics for the Anesthesiologist

“To practicing anesthesiologists who, because of the constant technologic and informational advances in medicine, face ever- widening challenges while being harassed by government and insurance companies with cost-containment measures and volumous paperwork and by the medicolegal system.’’

Oh! How those words ring true 15 years later in the “modern NHS’’. They also demonstrate why Fritz has been in demand to lecture all over the world. He tells it how it is in a thought provoking, inspirational but practical way. As a consequence he has held over 50 visiting professorships and regularly lectured at the IARS review courses and the ASA refresher courses. He has held posts on numerous professional organisations, and was, until recently, on the editorial board of ‘Pediatric Anesthesia’ and other journals.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to present Professor Fritz Berry for Honorary Membership of the APA.’