In Memoriam: Dr Richard Geeves OAM (1924 – 2020) 

In Memoriam: Dr Richard Geeves OAM (1924 – 2020) 

Dr Richard Banks Geeves (Dick) was born in 1924 and grew up in Pennant Hills in northern Sydney where his father Cuthbert Geeves was in general practice. He enlisted in the Australian Army at the completion of his schooling, and after training was deployed to Madang in New Guinea. He was discharged with typhus, dengue and depression, and on recovery in 1945 studied medicine at the University of Sydney.  

After his graduation from medicine in 1950, he moved to Newcastle to do his residency at Newcastle Hospital, and in 1955 he joined his father in general practice in Pennant Hills.  

In 1968 he recognised that there was a significant gap in the care of older people and people with a disability living in the community. At that time, whilst remaining in general practice, he was appointed as honorary community physician at Hornsby District Hospital. With strong support from his specialist and general practitioner colleagues including Dr RM (Dick) Gibson whom he had met whilst in Newcastle, he proceeded to develop a multidisciplinary team providing geriatric and rehabilitation services in the community. This team was allocated a hospital cottage which became a day rehabilitation centre, one of the earliest such medical rehabilitation centres in Sydney. 

In 1974 the NSW Health Commission supported the development of a salaried Community Geriatric and Rehabilitation Service at Hornsby Hospital, and Dick left general practice and became a full time physician at the Hospital. He proceeded to develop a larger community team, and went on to develop a 26 bed inpatient rehabilitation ward, day hospital, and well equipped outpatient unit in the Palmerston Building. He also designed and built a 60 bed transitional care and respite nursing home on the hospital grounds. These were all opened in 1975. His ability to network and raise money was legendary, and he was instrumental in raising funds for the nursing home, ward, day hospital and clinic. 

Dick considered that the best care for older people was provided by services working together and he brought the home nursing service, home help services, meals on wheels, and day activity centres under the umbrella of the Geriatric and Rehabilitation Service. He linked closely to local nursing homes through his nursing home liaison team, and had a band of more than a thousand volunteers who enthusiastically assisted in both the hospital and community. He insisted that the older person’s general practitioner stayed at the centre of care, with all services requiring a GP referral. This was true integrated care, 40 years before the term became trendy. 

Dick felt strongly that community stereotypes of ageing involving deterioration and dependency needed to be overturned, and he developed educational programs for hospital and community staff, for volunteers and family members, and for older people themselves, to encourage activity and good health into old age. He understood that older people wanted to be cared for at home rather than in an institution, and ensured that the Geriatric and Rehabilitation Service promoted this philosophy. He conceived the idea of a dementia respite day centre and implemented the centre in the early 1980s. This has subsequently expanded to a highly regarded service with carer support, education and in home respite roles. The centre at North Turramurra now carries his name. 

In 1986 Dick was asked to pilot a Geriatric Assessment Team for the Commonwealth Department of Health, using his well developed model of multidisciplinary community assessment and care. This model became the basis for all future Aged Care Assessment Teams across Australia, and the Hornsby team continues to this day as one of the busiest in NSW. 

Dick developed the concept of an integrated Aged Care and Rehabilitation Service that provides coordinated services to older people across both hospital and community. The success of the Service in the 1980s ensured that it was used as a model for geriatric services in NSW and beyond. His work was recognised with life membership of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine, and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, and with the award of the Medal of the Order of Australia. His contribution to geriatric and rehabilitation medicine in Australia has been immense, and his influence continues through the generations of geriatricians and rehabilitation physicians who have trained in their formative years in the Hornsby service.  

As per the rules at the time, he was required to retire at age 65, and after his retirement from Hornsby Hospital in 1989 he and his wife moved to Geeveston in Tasmania where they purchased an old Geeves family house “Hartzview” in Port Huon. Never one to slow down, Dick was involved in developing a new role for the Geeveston area after the closure of the large paper mill that had provided work for so much of the region. Together with other locals, he worked on creating a woodworking hub for Geeveston, and the famous Tahune Airwalk was part of that development, showcasing the Huon River and its wonderful forests, and attracting large numbers of tourists. He rapidly became a local identity through his involvement in these ventures, and his appearances on the ABC’s Landline, and in Forestry Tasmania advertisements on the backs of local buses. 

In 2018, he was the special guest at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Geriatric and Rehabilitation Service (now the Rehabilitation and Aged Care Service) where his achievements over his time at Hornsby were showcased. It was clear that he had been well ahead of his time with his thinking about geriatric medicine, and his design and development of services has shaped the landscape of geriatric medicine in Australia.  

Dick continued living in his home after the death of his wife in 2002 and remained an integral part of the community even having a street named after him. He was independent and living at home until ten days before his death in hospital on the 18th July 2020.

By Professor Susan Kurrle

Photo by Andrew Wilson