Being a leader in your particular medical field does not always just mean being the best at what you do - there is often a drive to help others reach the peak of their careers.
Mr Anthony Egglestone discovered this relatively quickly after becoming a Consultant Orthopaedic Trauma and Limb Reconstruction Surgeon.
“I am course director of a regional External Fixation and Intramedullary nailing course and I am the Early Years Postgraduate and Undergraduate lead within our department, so education is a real passion alongside my clinical work,” he explains.
“It's good to see people who were undergraduates coming through as foundation doctors or senior house officers returning as registrars and you know you have played a role in their development. It's incredibly rewarding.
“It is also a great way of staying on top of the latest developments as I can't teach people if I'm not totally up to date myself.”
Mr Egglestone specialises in complex orthopaedic trauma, limb reconstruction, bone infection and fracture complications including deformity and non-healing fractures.
After graduating from the Newcastle University School of Medicine in 2013, Mr Egglestone completed his early years post graduate training and higher surgical training in the North East England Rotation.
Following his orthopaedic training programme, he completed a fellowship in Complex Trauma and Limb Reconstruction at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow. Now an NHS consultant at University Hospital Tees, he also takes tertiary referrals from other surgeons and hospitals.
“My main NHS practice is focussed on complex trauma including open fractures, periarticular fractures of the lower limb and the sequelae of trauma such as fracture related infection, non-union and deformity.”
In addition to his trauma work, Mr Egglestone also has practice in elective Limb Reconstruction involving treatment patients with bone infection and limb deformities including limb length discrepancy.
Mr Egglestone’s chose his specialist field after developing an interest in this particular area of surgery.
“As a Foundation Doctor I really enjoyed my surgical rotations in Vascular Surgery and Orthopaedics. I liked the practical side of the work. As I started my training in Orthopaedics I worked with two consultants who introduced me to Limb Reconstruction and Circular Frame Surgery. I really found it interesting. It's a very versatile type of surgery with a lot of problem solving as you go.
“You can be in the middle of an operation; think everything's gone swimmingly and then something just changes slightly and you have to adapt to it. I enjoy that.
“Working on complex trauma then opened up the world of infection and non-union work which as a junior doctor before going into orthopaedics training, I hadn’t really appreciated. Once I started going into the clinics and seeing these patients on the ward, I realised orthopaedics was the line I was going to go down. I found it fascinating.”
Mr Egglestone is a member of the Orthopaedic Trauma Society (OTS), the British Limb Reconstruction Society (BLRS) and the Bone and Joint Infection Society.
He is also active in research. His published work includes a review of evidence-based orthopaedic trauma care in the UK in the European Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology, a study of revision surgery for failed total ankle replacement in International Orthopaedics and a review of joint infection after shoulder replacement in Shoulder and Elbow.
Two further studies went before the BLRS in 2024. One examined patient outcomes after Ilizarov frame fixation in the lower limb and the other asked whether simple and complex fractures receive the same standard of treatment.
He has also contributed to major national and international studies as a collaborative author, helping with patient recruitment and data collection. These include the INTELLECT audit of lower limb open fractures, published in the British Journal of Surgery, and the ORTHOPOD study of operative delays in UK trauma care, published in Injury.
Now he has decided to start medicolegal work to develop a new career path that he feels will complement his clinical practice. Having recently completed the Inspire MediLaw Expert Witness Training Courses, Mr Egglestone is keen to start utilising his knowledge and experience for medicolegal cases.
“I work every day a patient population who often have extra medical or mental health conditions which increase their risk of sustaining injuries and having complications from their injuries. Understanding this can really help explain the impact of injury on people and the expected recovery”.
Mr Egglestone will begin with personal injury cases before eventually moving into clinical negligence.
“Various mentors have discussed the benefits of medicolegal work on their own clinical practices. As I develop my medicolegal career to include both personal injury and clinical negligence work, I am interested to see how my clinical practice will progress based on what I learn in the medicolegal sector.
As full TLA member, he first came across the TLA team at a British Limb Reconstruction Society’s annual meeting. He had already spoken to many existing experts about setting up a medicolegal practice and was aware that leaders in his field are also full TLA members.
“Having a really experienced firm behind you like TLA who deal with all the administration for the case work is invaluable, allowing me to really focus on the medical aspects of each case. When I met the team, I knew this was exactly the type of consultancy I needed to work with.”
Away from his practice, Mr Egglestone is kept busy by his five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter. He also has a keen interest in rugby and played until recently before injuring his knee which has pushed him into coaching.
“Rugby is my real passion outside of work - it's a great sport and a great way to blow off steam,” he says.
Please email Senior Case Manager Emily Fallick on emilyf@tla-medicolegal.com for Mr Egglestone’s CV and further information.