Rosemarie Baillod (b 1936 )

Rosemarie Baillod qualified at the Royal Free Medical School in 1961 and worked in the renal unit at the Royal Free Hospital from its inception in 1964 until she retired in 1998.

Her pre-registration ‘house jobs” included one with urologists and another with Professor Sheila Sherlock. Towards the end of further general medical experience at the Middlesex hospital, she consulted Professor Sheila Sherlock for career advice . Sheila told her she was needed  to join Dr Stanley Shaldon at the Lawn Road branch of the Royal Free Hospital. Its kidney machine was dealing with AKI and to support transplantation, but from 1963 Shaldon was trying to develop dialysis for end stage kidney disease. The Royal Free was the first unit in the UK to formally attempt this.

She became closely involved with every practical element of the project, and from 1966 led the service. In 1964 she taught the first home haemodialysis patient in the UK and Europe. She was involved in safety, design and efficiency of dialysis equipment and access surgery, oversaw the expansion of home haemodialysis, and in 1969 initiated a children’s home haemodialysis programme, another first. Later she was also involved in the development of peritoneal dialysis in the home, setting up intermittent peritoneal dialysis in 1972 and later continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis in 1979.

She was widely renowned for her personal commitment to her patients and their families, and the individual care she delivered.

As she did not complete her formal training as  a physician, giving up a medical registrar training post to run the service, she was never appointed as a consultant. However after retirement she finally received proper recognition as an emeritus consultant, Royal Free Hospital, and emeritus honorary consultant, Great Ormond Street Hospital.

A quote from Rosemarie Baillod: “ What dialysis did as regards the changing attitudes to patients: I remember clearly the business of sharing accommodation between males and females, and we were having to defend ourselves to the matron. She was astonished that we had a female patient with a male patient for dialysis. We said ‘Do you want her die or do you want her to live? It’s as simple as that’.”

Audio interview with Dr Baillod

Hear Rosemarie Baillod interviewed by Neil Turner in 2022 (coming soon).

Further info

Royal Free Hospital renal and transplant units

Last Updated on June 1, 2023 by neilturn