Qualifications
MBChB (Birmingham), FRCP (London), FRACP, FACC, FRCPCH, FCSANZ
The beginnings?
English by birth, James was born in 1943 in Birmingham,
during the war years. He was known through his early years and as a
medical student as “Jimmy”, but subsequently as “Jim”.
He came from a “medical family” with both
his parents having been doctors, who had studied at the Birmingham Medical
School, as also did an older half brother and two paternal uncles. His father Prof KD Wilkinson OBE MD FRCP was a physician and paediatrician with a major interest in heart disease (particularly rheumatic and diphtheritic heart disease) in an era before congenital heart disease could be diagnosed using cardiac catheterisation or treated by effective cardiac surgery. When Jimmy was seven in 1951 his father died, at the age of 64, and he was subsequently sent away to boarding school for 4 1/2 years (May 1952
– December 1956). In 1952 the family moved to Bristol where he attended
secondary school from 1957 to 1961, at Clifton College.
After completing his school education he
returned to Birmingham to study medicine. He graduated in 1966 and then trained
as a paediatrician and cardiologist being appointed to a consultant position in
Liverpool in 1975. His research interests then and later involved a wide range
of issues including the morphology of congenital heart defects, in which he
collaborated closely with Professor Robert Anderson in London, epidemiology of
cardiac abnormalities, fetal echocardiography, interventional procedures and
numerous studies of the outcomes of cardiac surgery.
Achievements in Liverpool
He became a prominent member of the
Liverpool medical community and was chairman of the paediatric executive
committee, treasurer of the Liverpool Medical Institution and Director of the
Paediatric Cardiac Unit in Liverpool. In 1987, after 21 years working in the NHS in the UK, he was invited to apply for the position of Director
of Cardiology at The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, taking up
this position early in 1988.
Director of Cardiology at Royal Children's Hospital
Over the next few years he oversaw
the establishment of the first paediatric heart transplant program in
Australia, the development of an active academic department with a strong
fellowship training program and the initiation of a number of interventional
procedures. He became a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC).
He mentored many paediatric cardiac
interventionists and proctored the commencement of such procedures as device
closure of atrial septal defects in paediatric and adult catheter laboratories
all over Australia and in many South East Asian centres. He served as a member
of Council of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand for a number of
years and was the paediatric representative on the cardiology training committee
of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
He was the director of cardiology,
at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, until 2001 when he handed over
the role to a colleague whom he had trained in the 1990s. Soon afterwards he
took on another role as Chairman of the Organising Committee for the 5th
World Congress of Paediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery which took place in Cairns, Queensland, in June 2009.
Following that meeting he became the Chairman of the International Steering Committee for World Congresses of Paediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery from 2009 - 2013.
Subsequent Career
Having stepped back from running the
department he took on the role of Chairman of the Medical Staff Association (MSA).
In this position he oversaw many changes, including the approval of funding for
a new hospital and agreement to the siting of the new building.
He was appointed a Professorial Fellow, in the
department of Paediatrics, in 2005 and he spent most of the next four years on
preparations for the World Congress in 2009. After that meeting had finished,
in June 2009, he had expected to retire being then past 65 years old. However
he was invited to continue working part-time, doing outpatient work and
teaching of medical students and postgraduates, which he thoroughly enjoyed.
Over the following two years he watched the progress of the building of the new
hospital and in November 2011 the hospital moved into its new buildings, which
had been officially opened a few weeks earlier by Her Majesty the Queen.
Honours
In 2011 he was a recipient of the Elizabeth Turner Medal – an award given by senior medical staff “To acknowledge excellence in clinical care provided by a member of the Senior Medical/Dental Staff of the RCH over an extended period of time.”
In June 2019 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the general division (AM), in the Queens Birthday Honours, for services to medicine in the field of Paediatric Cardiology.
Post Retirement
He continued in a part time
position, in the new hospital, assisting with outpatient work on an occasional basis until September 2019 and still has a regular role in post graduate teaching of residents and
registrars. He served as treasurer of the RCH Alumni from 2015 to 2021 and is now President of the Alumni Association.
Family
He is married to Helen, a Sydneysider whom he met in the UK in 1971, and who worked until 2008 as an operating theatre nurse. They have four sons and seven grandchildren. One son is a paediatrician and ethicist, who trained at Royal Children's Hospital and is now Professor of Medical Ethics in Oxford. Another son is an orthopaedic surgeon and a third is a veterinary surgeon and world record holding long distance swimmer (Manhattan Island Marathon Swim - 46 km). Their youngest son is a career diplomat.