A tribute to George F. Sheldon’s vision, versatility, and leadership by example

To honor Dr. Sheldon’s service to the Department of Surgery, the School of Medicine, and the University and to recognize his national and international leadership in the surgical discipline, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hosted a Festschrift in his honor on April 20, 2002. In conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the UNC School of Medicine, Dr. Sheldon’s life-long achievements were celebrated with a scientific symposium and black-tie banquet (Fig. 1).

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Fig. 1. Anthony A. Meyer, MD, PhD, presents George F. Sheldon, MD, with a token of the Department’s appreciation.

One of the most respected faculty members at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Dr. George F. Sheldon is the Zack D. Owens Distinguished Professor of Surgery. As Chairman, he led the Department of Surgery from his recruitment to Chapel Hill in 1984 from the University of California School of Medicine and San Francisco General Hospital until August 2001, when he demitted as Chair.

The scientific symposium featured eight distinguished speakers who presented scientific papers honoring Dr. Sheldon’s achievements (Fig. 2): Julian T. Hoff, MD, Professor and Chair, Department of Neurosurgery, University of Michigan; Kenneth A. Kudsk, MD, Professor of Surgery, Director of Surgical Research, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Josef E. Fischer, MD, FACS, FRCSE (Hon), DM (Hon), Mallinckrodt Professor of Surgery and Chair, Department of Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Claude H. Organ, Jr., MD, MS (Surg), FACS, FRCSSA, FRACS, Professor of Surgery, University of California at San Francisco, Chairman, UCSF East Bay Surgery Pro-gram; Lazar J. Greenfield, MD, Professor and Chair Emeritus, Department of Surgery, University of Michigan; Michael C. Magee, MD, Senior Medical Advisor, Pfizer, Inc, New York, New York; Sir Barry Jackson, MS, FRCS, FRCP, Immediate Past President, Royal College of Surgeons, England, President Elect, Royal Society of Medicine of London; F. William Blaisdell, MD, Professor and Chairman Emeritus, Department of Surgery, University of California at Davis. On the evening of April 20, a reception and black-tie dinner were held in the Banquet Hall of the Morehead Planetarium. Robert N. Shelton, PhD, Executive Vice Chancellor, Provost; Stuart Bondurant, MD, Dean Emeritus and Professor, UNC School of Medicine; and Eric B. Munson, President and CEO, UNC Hospitals, spoke on Dr. Sheldon’s 17 years of service.

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Fig. 2. (First row) Frank Lewis, MD; Michael Magee, MD; (see below) F. William Blaisdell, MD; Lazar Greenfield, MD; W. Gerald Austen, MD; Colin G. Thomas, Jr., MD; and George F. Sheldon, MD. (Second row) Anthony A. Meyer, MD, PhD; Murray Brennan, MB; Josef Fischer, MD; Julian T. Hoff, MD; Claude Organ, MD; Kenneth Kudsk, MD; Sir Barry Jackson, MS; James Goodnight, MD; and Laurence Cheung, MD.

Doctor Sheldon is one of the most visionary, engaging, and thoughtful leaders in academic medicine. His eminence in surgery and in graduate medical education is recognized internationally. Doctor Sheldon’s prodigious gift for leadership is readily evidenced by the scope of his contributions and influence.

Doctor Sheldon’s education in surgery began about the same time he entered first grade. Because of the severe shortage of medical personnel on the home front during World War II, he began helping out in a hospital operating room in his hometown of Salina, Kansas, where his father was a physician. He worked at the hospital throughout his high school years having long since decided on a career in surgery. He was recently honored by election to the Salina High School’s Hall of Fame, whose membership includes a governor of Kansas and an astronaut.

At the University of Kansas, he excelled academically and demonstrated an uncommon aptitude for service and leadership. During 3 of his 4 years as an undergraduate, Dr. Sheldon held the faculty rank of Assistant Instructor in the Department of Western Civilization where he taught classical literature. As an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, Dr. Sheldon was Student Body President. At Kansas University School of Medicine, where he graduated in 1961, he co-authored the book The Doctor, 1861-1961, A Pictorial History of Kansas Medicine in the centennial year of the state of Kansas. He received the L.L. Marcell Award for Highest Academic Standing in Medicine and went on to complete his internship at Kansas University Medical Center. Kansas University in 2000 bestowed upon Dr. Sheldon their Distinguished Medical Alumnus Award.

After internship, he served in the Marine Hospital Service of the United States Public Health Service, the Coast Guard Medical Corps. After service, he completed a fellowship in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. Doctor Sheldon began his surgical residency at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center in 1965. He completed a five-year residency program in four years and received the Helmut Fesca Award for Best Resident in his third year. His residency was followed by a Special Postdoctoral Fellowship of the National Heart Institute and a Research Fellowship in Surgical Biology at Harvard Medical School at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.

Doctor Sheldon then joined the faculty of the University of California School of Medicine in 1971 where he achieved the rank of Professor in 1980. He participated in the founding of one of the first Trauma Centers in the country at San Francisco General Hospital. As Chief of the Trauma Service, he trained Army, Navy, and Air Force trauma surgeons before they began their tours of duty in Vietnam. Maintaining over the years his interest in trauma, he received the Surgeons’ Award for Distinguished Service to Safety from the National Safety Council in 1993. When he left San Francisco to become Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of North Carolina, Dianne Feinstein (then Mayor and later Senator) issued a Proclamation of Appreciation for his services to San Francisco during those turbulent years.

As a result of his fellowship training in Boston, Dr. Sheldon was among the first physicians in the country and the first one on the West Coast to feed patients via hyperalimentation, and among the first to investigate the effects of intravenous feeding on the immune system. His research demonstrated the important role the small intestine plays in the immune system. While serving as Director of the Physiological Research Facility of the San Francisco General Hospital, he and his colleagues published numerous papers on the subject validating and refining earlier findings. Doctor Sheldon’s other research interests include intra-erythrocytic regulation of oxygen transport, sepsis after injury, and surgery of the spleen.

While guiding the Department of Surgery to achieve unprecedented levels of activity and excellence in patient care, education, research, and community service, Dr. Sheldon is one of fewer than 20 surgeons in the past 100 years to have served as President or Chair of every major surgical organization including the American College of Surgeons (ACS), American Surgical Association (ASA), American Board of Surgery (ABS), Society of Surgical Chairmen, and American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST), and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

In addition to leadership in the surgical disciplines, Dr. Sheldon is an acknowledged expert in several areas of health policy. He assisted a friend from college, Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, in drafting health legislation. By invitation he has advised members of Congress and crafted legislation including the portion of the bill that increased the funding of residencies of all specialties to first certification or 5 years. He has testified at Congressional hearings regarding graduate medical education, the health care workforce, physician compensation, specialty practice, professionalism, and the Balanced Budget Act. In 1984 he was appointed by the US Secretary of Health and Human Services as one of 16 original members of the congressionally mandated Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME). Doctor Sheldon was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Science in 1996. He has served on IOM task forces that have issued reports on the US physician supply, health care technology assessment, employer-based health insurance, and fluid resuscitation for combat casualties.

Doctor Sheldon has demonstrated strong support for women and minorities in surgery. He is one of only three surgeons to be awarded an Honorary Fellowship in the Society of Black Academic Surgeons. He received the Douglass Stubbs Award of the National Medical Association in 1992. He is an original member of an ad hoc committee of the AAMC Committee on Increasing Women’s Leadership Roles in Academic Medicine.

In 2000 Dr. Sheldon was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in recognition of his exceptional contributions to medicine. In addition, Dr. Sheldon has been an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh since 1995, and he holds honorary fellowships from the European Surgical Association, the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, the Colombian Surgical Association, the International Surgical Group, and others.

Doctor Sheldon holds membership in 38 scientific societies and has held 14 national offices. He is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society, the James IV Association of Surgeons, the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery, and is listed in Who’s Who in America. He was named “Tarheel of the Week” by the Raleigh News and Observer in 1995, and was elected to the Order of the Golden Fleece, the oldest honor society at UNC-Chapel Hill. Doctor Sheldon is an Honorary Member of the Hunterian Society and presented the 175th Hunterian Lecture in 2000.

Doctor Sheldon is a member of the Blue Ridge Academic Health Group, a think tank of the University of Virginia Health Policy Institute and Ernst & Young LLP. The group seeks a societal view of health care and makes recommendations to nationally leading academic health centers. Reports have been issued on academic health centers as business entities, on advocacy that good health is good business, on academic medicine as knowledge leaders, and on management of knowledge in the world of heightened information technology.

Doctor Sheldon’s 17-year tenure as Chair of the Department of Surgery was a period of vigorous growth. During that period many new programs were established, and operative volume in the institution tripled. Doctor Sheldon has been a magnet to attract sound and scholarly talent to the Department of Surgery. The growth of the Department is evidenced by the recruitment of 103 new faculty members. Doctor Sheldon says his ability to identify and recruit top-notch people is due, in part, to his active involvement in national surgical organizations and to assigning a high priority to recruiting the best faculty, residents, students and staff.

The Department of Surgery has a strong commitment to the education of medical students. The Department’s commitment was acknowledged in 1995 when the medical student class voted to award the Department of Surgery two esteemed honors, the Best Basic Science Course Award and the Best Clinical Clerkship Award.

Doctor Sheldon has always recognized residents as having a critical role in educating and setting an example for medical students. The nationally acclaimed Resident as a Teacher Program, an annual symposium to enhance teaching skills, is Dr. Sheldon’s creation. Demonstrating the importance he places on teaching, Resident as a Teacher is credited with playing a role in producing the Department’s long list of Intern of the Year awards. The Program has been widely emulated at the UNC School of Medicine, and is now an established educational program of the American College of Surgeons.

Doctor Sheldon in 1999 created a special society within the School of Medicine for medical students interested in surgery, called the Hugh Williamson Society, honoring an original Trustee of the University who was surgeon to the North Carolina Revolutionary War troops and one of the nation’s Founding Fathers. During his tenure as President of the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Sheldon similarly founded the Candidate and Associate Society of the American College of Surgeons (CAS-ACS) to benefit future surgeons through involvement in activities of the College.

Doctor Sheldon is an authority on the history of surgery and the contribution of European and English surgery on the founding of the first medical schools in the United States. His articles on the Father of American Surgery, Philip Syng Physick, MD, are included in the citations referenced by the Dictionary of American Biography. The author of over 300 articles, books, and book chapters, Dr. Sheldon holds editorial board appointments at several national peer-reviewed medical journals including Annals of Surgery, the American Journal of Surgery, Shock, Journal of Trauma and Critical Care, and the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Doctor Sheldon and his wife of 42 years, Ruth, have three daughters: Anne Anderson, Elizabeth Sheldon, and Julie Sheldon. Their grandchildren, Anne’s two adopted children, Andrei and Elena, were born in Russia. His older brother, Richard Robert Sheldon, PhD, is Professor and Chair of Russian Language and Literature and is former Dean of Liberal Arts at Dartmouth College. Younger brother William F. Sheldon, PhD, is Director of the Deutsch-Amerika Haus in Nuremburg, Germany.

As a permanent tribute to Dr. Sheldon’s interests and achievements, The George F. Sheldon Distinguished Professorship in Surgery will be established to augment support for vital educational, clinical care, and research efforts. In this way, the Sheldon Professorship will assure the continued success of the UNC Department of Surgery by supporting a multidisciplinary leader in surgery who exhibits Dr. Sheldon’s commitment to excellence in the field. (If interested, please contact the Medical Foundation at 1-800-962-2543.)