Rate My Professor Simon Richards

Simon Richards serves as a Clinical Senior Lecturer and Consultant Colorectal and General Surgeon in the Department of Surgery and Critical Care, University of Otago, Christchurch, within the Faculty of Medicine. He earned his MBChB with Distinction in 2009, PGDipSurgAnat with Distinction in 2011, and MMedSc with Distinction in 2020, all from the University of Otago. Additionally, he is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (FRACS) in General Surgery since 2017 and a member of the Colorectal Surgical Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSSANZ) since 2022. A Christchurch native, he completed his undergraduate medical training in Dunedin and surgical training in Christchurch. Following his FRACS fellowship, he advanced his expertise through subspecialty training in colorectal surgery at Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth in 2019, the Royal Melbourne and Women’s Hospitals in 2020, and Western Health in Melbourne in 2021, prior to returning to Christchurch.

Richards contributes to medical education as co-convenor of the 6th Year Trainee Intern Surgery Module and instructor for 4th Year students on surgical placements. His research specializations include perioperative assessment, patient frailty, colorectal cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease. Key publications co-authored by him are "Incidence and risk factors for unplanned readmission after colorectal surgery: A meta-analysis" published in 2023, "Current sessile serrated lesion incidence: implications for future clinical practice" in 2024, "Computed tomography colonography performs poorly in detection of sessile serrated lesions" forthcoming in 2025, and "Pre-operative frailty is predictive of adverse post-operative outcomes following elective colorectal surgery" in 2021. His MMedSc thesis, "The Impact of Frailty on Outcomes Following Major Colorectal Surgery," was completed in 2019.