New Year Honours 2024: Tauranga surgeon Richard Keddell made member of NZ Order of Merit for services to orthopaedics

Richard Geoffrey Keddell

Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to orthopaedics

Tauranga orthopaedic surgeon Richard Geoffrey Keddell’s more than 30 years of outstanding service in public and private practice has been acknowledged in the 2024 New Year’s Honours list.

Keddell, 67, says he feels “humbled and a bit embarrassed” to be made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to orthopaedics and contribution to governance roles.

Alexandra-born Keddell worked as an orthopaedic surgeon in both public and private practice in the Bay of Plenty from 1992 but has since retired from public hospital work and runs a specialist practice at Grace Orthopaedic Centre next door to Grace Hospital.

Keddell is a consultant surgeon at Grace Hospital.

His “passion” for getting people up and walking as soon as possible after joint replacement surgery and improving outcomes for patients is renowned.

Over the past three decades, Keddell has held several governance roles in his field of medicine and has been a driving force behind fundraising efforts for more research to improve patients’ lives.

He was clinical director of orthopaedics for the then-Bay of Plenty Health Board from 2005 to 2015 and is a past president of the NZ Knee Society.

Keddell was a member of the NZ Orthopaedic Association from 2014 to 2018 and was national president from 2016 to 2017.

As chairman of the Specialty Orthopaedic Training Board from 2017 and 2022, he increased the number of female and Māori trainees accepted into the training programme, the New Year’s Honour nomination said.

Keddell is an honorary member of the Ladies in Orthopaedics NZ Association in recognition of his mentorship and fiscal support for female orthopaedic surgeons.

Since 1997, he has been chairman and trustee of the Wishbone Orthopaedic Research Foundation of NZ that raises and distributes funds for research into advances in orthopaedic surgery in New Zealand.

Keddell told the Bay of Plenty Times he had some ideas about who had nominated him and who co-operated with that person in writing the nomination.

“And when I find who they are I will confront them on New Year’s Day,” he joked.

Keddell said he felt “humbled and a bit embarrassed” by the prestigious award.

“There are hundreds of other surgeons and physicians doing this type of work in New Zealand and I can immediately think of plenty of other people who would be deserving of a New Year’s Honour,” he said.

“It’s also an amazing privilege to help relieve people’s pain, particularly those with deformity problems, and bone and joint problems. I often think about that when I’m doing surgery and see patients up and walking again within days.”

Tauranga orthopaedic surgeon Richard Geoffrey Keddell has been made a member of the NZ Order of Merit in the 2024 New Year's Honours.

Keddell said in the past patients would spend several weeks in a hospital but now they were going home after one or two nights.

He said after graduating from Otago School of Medicine with a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery in 1982, he worked at Tauranga Hospital for two years, initially as a registrar then was accepted into the orthopaedics training programme.

From 1986 he spent two years doing more training at Hamilton and Christchurch hospitals followed by further training in hip and knee joint replacements at Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in the UK and arthroscopic and knee sports surgery in Melbourne.

In 1989 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons after undertaking post-graduate training.

Keddell’s “landmark publication on the management of tibial fractures in 1991 influenced the standard of care worldwide”, background notes for his honour said.

Keddell said this publication in the British Medical Journal was the result of a clinical trial undertaken at Christchurch Hospital comparing putting patients in plaster casts to the far better operative treatment of inserting a rod down the middle of the tibia bone.

“By the time of this publication, it was pretty obvious operative treatment was going to mean far better outcomes for patients but until this trial, no one had proved it.”

A chuffed Keddell said a visiting American orthopaedic surgeon had recently told him this publication had “changed his life and the lives of his patients”.

“I’m a passionate supporter of the need for more research including new trials into better surgical and treatment approaches,” he said.

“We may be a small country, but New Zealand has always been a great contributor to orthopaedic research and we are well respected for that.”

Beyond orthopaedics, Keddell’s interests are farming and helping his wife, Wendy, run a sport horse stud in Whakamarama.

“It’s my job to deliver the foals. I’m able to call on my farming experience, and feel the most relaxed when I’m doing that or sitting on a tractor.”

Sandra Conchie is a senior journalist at the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post who has been a journalist for 24 years. She mainly covers police, court and other justice stories, as well as general news. She has been a Canon Media Awards regional/community reporter of the year.