Ann Thorac Surg 2009;88:1729-1731. doi:10.1016/j.athoracsur.2009.09.074
© 2009 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons
Our Surgical Heritage
Richard Anderson: Cardiothoracic Surgeon Personified
Mark B. Orringer, MD*
Section of Thoracic Surgery, University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan
* Address correspondence to Dr Orringer, Section of Thoracic Surgery, University of Michigan Medical Center, 1500 E Medical Center Dr, 2120 Taubman Center, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (Email: morrin{at}umich.edu).
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Abstract
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Richard Anderson epitomized the best of the specialty of cardiothoracic surgery. A superb technical surgeon, he spent the majority of his career at the Virginia Mason Clinic in Seattle where he headed a highly regarded cardiac surgery program. His no nonsense work ethic and integrity were widely respected and resulted in multiple professional leadership roles: President of the Western Thoracic Surgical Association, Chairman of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery Examination Committee, President of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, and President of CTSNet. Richard Anderson will be remembered for his strength of character and his enormous selfless contributions of time and energy to our specialty.
On January 18, 2009, the specialty of thoracic surgery lost one of its cherished leaders and most devoted advocates after complications of abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery, Dr Richard Anderson. He had an interest in his family genealogy, and his personal "Family History Notes" provide a wonderful documentation of his background. His grandfather, Peter Anderson, immigrated from Sweden to the United States in 1870, abandoned the Swedish language, did not seek out Swedish communities, and set about to learn English and become acculturated as soon as possible. He met and married a woman of German descent, and they were involved with the Oklahoma land rush at the turn of the century. The hardships of cotton farming in the Oklahoma plains were great. Anderson's father, Berton, was born there, and when Berton's mother died when he was 7 years old, Peter sold the farm and moved West with Berton, settling in Chehalis, a logging town in southwest Washington State. When Peter eventually remarried, Berton, then in his twenties, did not relate well to his stepmother and moved out of the house. He was given money, however, by his father to attend dental school in Portland. He became a dentist, and lived and practiced dentistry in Seattle. Berton courted and married Emmogene Powell, the daughter of the town dentist.
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Richard Anderson, MD, 1934–2009.
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Richard Powell Anderson was born to Berton and Emmogene Anderson on June 1, 1934, in Seattle, Washington. He was an only child. He grew up in the Seattle area and attended local public schools. He was 12 years old and in the sixth grade when World War II ended. He learned a love of salmon fishing from his father, who was hired as faculty at the new University of Washington School of Dentistry and ultimately became Professor and Associate Dean there. Anderson joined the Boy Scouts, hiked the back country and camped in the Olympic Mountains, and became an avid skier. He delivered newspapers and worked in the local grocery store to earn money. Skiing became increasingly important in his life. He skied each year in Sun Valley, Idaho, during school vacations and earned beer money by playing the piano at local bars, a talent with which he would later entertain his friends. In high school, he worked as a ski instructor and ski patrolman. He learned first aid from Jim Whitaker, the first American to summit on Mt. Everest. It was at this time when the satisfaction of helping the sick and injured became his calling, and he started to consider the possibility of a career in medicine. During spring vacation in his senior year of high school, he returned to Sun Valley, contemplated a life as a ski instructor, but on return home decided to attend college. During his last summer before college, Anderson worked in a coal mine and finished with "a new understanding of those who do heavy labor" and gratitude for the opportunities that his parents had given him. Dick Anderson attended the University of Washington in Seattle School of Arts and Sciences, where he pledged a fraternity and still maintained excellent grades. In one of his summer jobs in college, Anderson worked as baggage handler at the SeaTac Airport, where his boss gave him some advice, which he often quoted later and would influence the rest of his life: "Son, if someone asks you to do something because it needs to be done, never say ‘this isn't part of my job'—just do it."
At age 21, in the fall of 1955, Anderson was successful in his application to the School of Medicine at the University of Washington after only 3 years of college, going against conventional wisdom because he wanted to "get on with my profession." He found the academic rigors of medical school far more challenging than undergraduate school, but he lived at home and claimed that his mother's cooking sustained him. He did very well academically and was elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. In the summer of his second year of medical school, Anderson moved into Doctors Hospital, now part of the Virginia Mason Clinic, where he was provided a stipend of $50 a month and room and board in exchange for doing history and physical examinations on patients each evening. His interest and enthusiasm for surgery were ignited by the opportunity to assist at surgery at night and on weekends when the regular house staff were unavailable. It was at this point that Richard Anderson decided to become a surgeon. His clinical rotations in his third year were at Harborview Hospital and only furthered his enthusiasm for a surgical career. He worked in the laboratory of Dr Henry Harkins, Professor and Head of Surgery at the University of Washington, who recommended him for internship at The Johns Hopkins Hospital where he had been on the staff.
Anderson met JoAnne Downing, a student nurse, during his sophomore year in medical school. They were married at the end of his junior year. After medical school in 1959, the Andersons traveled east to Baltimore for his surgical training at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. This experience included a 2-year cardiac surgery fellowship at the National Heart Institute of the NIH where he was influenced by Dr Andrew Glen Morrow. On his return to Hopkins, he was mentored by such cardiac surgery "giants" as Alfred Blalock, Henry Bahnson, David Sabiston, and Frank Spencer. The Andersons had two sons, Arlen and Alan. After serving as the Halsted Chief Resident in Surgery at Hopkins, Anderson returned to the West and joined the cardiac surgery faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of California, Davis in 1967. Three years later, in 1970, he was recruited to the cardiopulmonary surgery faculty at the University of Oregon in Portland where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1971 and remained until 1974 when he accepted the position of Chief of the Section of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Virginia Mason Clinic in Seattle, Washington. He was recruited to build a cardiac surgery program there, and he achieved this goal exceedingly well. Anderson would spend the remainder of his clinical career at Virginia Mason. In 1980, he became Chief of the Department of Surgery at The Mason Clinic. He was appointed Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine in 1981 and Clinical Professor in the School of Public Health in 1997. His organizational and administrative skills and understanding of finances were capitalized on at the Virginia Mason Clinic, where during his tenure he served on the Executive and Finance Committees and chaired additional key committees including Personnel, Physician Orientation, Tertiary Care, Legislative Activity and Financing, and Technology Transfer. With enormous energy and commitment, he served the Virginia Mason Medical Center from 1974 through 1996. His distaste for bureaucratic "red tape" was well known to his colleagues. His analytical mind and his ability to synthesize the facts and focus on the problem at hand became the trademarks of this superb clinician and leader.
Beyond his impact on the Virginia Mason Medical Center, Richard Anderson contributed tirelessly and enormously to the specialty of cardiothoracic surgery. He was not a "surgeon-scientist." Rather, Richard Anderson was a superb technical surgeon with clinical judgment honed on years of experience. His no-nonsense work ethic and integrity earned him the respect of his colleagues. He was an active member of the Western Thoracic Surgical Association in which he served as Councilor-at-large, Treasurer, Vice-President, and ultimately President in 1990–1991. He also chaired the Ethics Committee of this organization for 4 years. Although always difficult to be called on to judge the behavior of one's peers, Anderson's reputation for fairness and good judgment made him eminently qualified for this position.
For 8 years, Richard Anderson served the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, first as a Director from 1993 to 2001, then as Chairman of the General Thoracic Subcommittee, and finally as Chairman of the Examination Committee. He was a spokesman for administering a fair, meaningful, standardized examination to those seeking certification by the Board. He took the time to study statistics and was among the few who truly understood the statistical analysis of the reliability of each ABTS examination question, which was carefully assessed by the Board's statistical staff.
Richard Anderson distinguished himself as a member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, which has flourished because of his type of spirit of volunteerism. He chaired the Membership Committee. Long before the STS Cardiac Surgery Database came into existence, Anderson recognized the importance of the specialty in monitoring the outcomes of its care and using this information to constructively engage "outliers" in efforts at self-improvement. From 1983 to 1985, he chaired the Ad Hoc Select Committee on Open Heart Surgery Registry. This effort would ultimately lead to the development of the STS Cardiac Surgery Database, now recognized nationwide by the government, insurers, and industry as a source of reliable outcomes data resulting from a system of validated self-monitoring by the specialty. That he regarded this effort as important is reflected by his service on the STS Database Liaison Committee (Chair), the Ad Hoc Committee on Physician-Specific Mortality for Cardiac Surgery, and the Ad Hoc Committee on Clinical Privileges in Cardiac Surgery. Anderson had honed his business acumen at the Virginia Mason Clinic. He very effectively chaired the STS Finance Committee for 3 years. Highly deserving of the honor, Richard Anderson was elected STS President and served in this capacity from 1998 to 1999. Facile with advances in information technology, he chaired the Workforce on Internet Applications and Communication and was then Chair of the STS Council on Quality, Research, and Patient Safety from 2006 until the time of his death in 2009. Ironically, this latter Council of the STS, among other things, coordinated the activities of the STS Cardiac, General Thoracic, and Pediatric Cardiac Surgery databases 23 years after Anderson's original work on the Open Heart Surgery Registry. Not surprisingly, in 2004, Richard Anderson received the STS Distinguished Service Award, the highest award bestowed by the organization for contributions to the STS and the specialty of thoracic surgery.
Richard Anderson served his profession in many unique ways. He was the American Association for Thoracic Surgery Representative to Perfusionist Organizations for 8 years, a member of the Board of Governors of the American Board of Cardiovascular Perfusion for 7 years, President of the American Heart Association of Washington, and Vice-Chair of the AMA Committee on Allied Health Education and Accreditation. He was forward thinking, recognized that globalization of our specialty was inherently right, and supported the concept of a worldwide Internet information exchange among all cardiothoracic surgeons. He was influential in supporting the development of CTSNet and had just completed his term as President of this organization the year before his death.
Richard Anderson was the epitome of the "thoracic surgery personality"—organized, no-nonsense, and passionately devoted to his profession and medical discipline. His handsome, angular facial features reflected his Swedish background. He was meticulous about every aspect of his life. He had a wonderful sense of humor to which his friends can attest. He never lost the ability from his youth to play the piano and revel in song. He was a beloved husband and devoted father who loved spending time with his family, particularly at their vacation home on the Hood Canal. Those of us who were privileged to know him benefited enormously from his friendship, his counsel, and his experience as a cardiothoracic surgeon. As mentioned above, he often quoted the advice of his boss at one of his summer jobs in college: " ... if someone asks you to do something because it needs to be done, never say ‘this isn't part of my job'—just do it." Richard Anderson "did"—over and over again for thoracic surgery. His accomplishments and efforts for our profession are inextricably woven into the fabric of our surgical heritage.
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Acknowledgments
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The author is indebted to Mrs JoAnne Anderson for her willingness to corroborate details of her husband's life and to Alan Anderson for providing a copy of his father's personal and unpublished "Family History Notes," which contained details of the Anderson family history that would not otherwise have been available.
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