Dr. William Wall, Recipient of 2015 Award of Merit by Royal College
Congratulations to Dr. William Wall who has been awarded the 2015 James H. Graham Award of Merit by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. The award is named after the organization’s former secretary-general, James Graham. It recognizes outstanding achievements that reflect the aims and objectives of the Royal College.
Dr. Wall is being recognized as a surgeon, scholar and leader in health care, who has dedicated his career to advancing transplantation and surgery. He has worked tirelessly to increase awareness about the importance of organ donation in the London community, the province and the country.
For half a century, Dr. Wall has been at Western, first arriving as a student in 1964. He was appointed to the Faculty of Surgery at Western in 1977. Over the years, Dr. Wall has been recognized for many accomplishments. He established Canada’s first successful liver transplant program at University Hospital, where nearly 2,000 transplants have been performed during his career. His patients are the longest surviving recipients in Canada and amongst the longest in the world.
Dr. Wall was a founding member of the International Liver Transplant Society, serving as its President from 1995-1997. He was the Director of the Multi-Organ Transplant Program at University Hospital from 1997-2007. The Canadian Society of Transplantation honoured him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, and the same year he was appointed to the Order of Canada for developing and advancing liver transplantation and for his efforts at increasing organ donation.
The James H. Graham Award is the most prestigious prize of the Royal College. Other surgeons who have received the award include Drs Robert MacBeth, David Mulder and Richard Reznick. This additional honour comes at a special time for Dr. Wall. Although he is retiring on January 31, 2015, Dr. Wall will be appointed Emeritus Professor of Surgery at Western and will continue teaching future medical students. Dr. Wall was voted the Outstanding Teacher in the Department of Surgery by Western’s medical students for the past four years.
