Robert Shields was a doyen of British surgery in the second half of the last century. As president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1994-97 he was responsible for raising its management and administration systems to match the increasing role it was playing in maintaining standards and surgical education in the UK and elsewhere.

He was especially involved in raising the training standards for surgeons overseas, and he was able to achieve complete equivalence in higher surgical training between the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. In recognition of this the Hong Kong College of Surgeons established a Shields Medal to be awarded to the most successful candidate in the Joint Fellowship Examination.

As president of the Edinburgh college he was called on to play a key role in many medical political issues. Most notably he led a working party which led to the creation of the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland, a statutory body which was the Scottish equivalent of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in England.

In his university career Shields had taken over the headship of the small and demoralised department of surgery in the University of Liverpool in 1969. Under his guidance it became one of the most successful in the UK. In the first UK Research Assessment Exercise of the Higher Funding Council in 1982, his was one of only two departments of surgery to achieve star rating as being of international status. It became a virtual incubator for chairs of surgery, training 12 professors, including the first woman to occupy the post of chairman of a university department of surgery.

His policy was to give intense encouragement and initial financial support to members of his department so that they could form teams to develop research interests within the overall departmental programme which encompassed breast and gastrointestinal cancer and liver disease.

As a result of this approach the department’s research profile rose, funds were attracted from the chief UK sources, and research fellows from many parts of the world were attracted to work with him. In addition Shields was always keen to develop research and service links with other university departments, especially gastroenterology and physiology, and as a result the department achieved national recognition for the emergency treatment of bleeding oesophageal varices.

In 1983 he was persuaded to become the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Liverpool, and the management principles which he had established in the department were translated to a broader canvas. This was an exciting time to be part of the medical-academic community in Liverpool. Shields attracted funding from the Department of Health to establish new chairs in general practice and in public health, and excellent candidates were appointed to both posts. A new collaborative spirit developed between clinical and science departments. He improved the cool relations between the university and the local NHS by incorporating undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in district hospitals and establishing academic clinical posts within them. This has since become normal practice, but Shields deserves huge credit for breaking down barriers which sometimes seemed insurmountable.

Robert Shields was born and raised in the West of Scotland. He attended the John Neilson Institution, Paisley. After a distinguished undergraduate medical career, his initial surgical training in Glasgow — and National Service in the RAMC, including a posting to Berlin — was followed by a research fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, which had great influence on his research career.

His MD thesis was awarded the Bellahouston Gold Medal, and he gained fellowships of both the Edinburgh and London Colleges of Surgeons. He was appointed to a senior lectureship in the University of Wales where he was promoted to reader in 1968, before moving to Liverpool in 1969.

He received many honours. He was knighted in 1990, and was president of the British Society of Gastroenterology, the Surgical Research Society and the James IV Association of Surgeons. He served as a member of the Medical Research Council and the General Medical Council and within the NHS, became vice-chairman of the Mersey Regional Health Authority.

He was awarded honorary fellowships, visiting professorships and honorary degrees in many countries.

Bob Shields was an excellent colleague whose judgment was invariably sound. Industrious to a fault, he had a most engaging personality. He was highly respected and liked by his peers and juniors in the many fields where his influence was felt.

Shields is survived by his wife, Marianne, and their three children.

Sir Robert Shields, Professor of Surgery, University of Liverpool, 1969-96, was born on November 6, 1930. He died of cancer on October 3, 2008, aged 77