A culturally significant event in the School’s calendar, the Lecture invites a distinguished speaker to deliver a talk of their choosing to an audience of OSH students, Feoffees, Governors and guests.  The tradition of the Foley Lecture has always been to bring together students, staff and those affiliated with OSH to share a meal, to discuss current affairs and to benefit from attending a lecture on a subject of contemporary or historic interest from a guest of national or international importance. 

This year’s speaker, OSH alumnus and UK Defence Professor of Military Surgery, Colonel Nigel Tai CBE, delivered such a lecture.  After leaving OSH in 1986, Nigel studied medicine at University College London followed by surgical training in London, Essex and South Africa before being appointed to the Royal London Hospital as a Consultant in Trauma and Vascular Surgery in 2005.  At the same time, he served in the Territorial Army, commissioning into the regular Army in 2006 when he was deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan as a surgeon with 16 Medical Regiment/6 PARA Battlegroup.

Since then, he has undertaken numerous deployments overseas and served in leadership roles in both Trauma and Defence Medicine, culminating in his holding the rank of the late Queen Elizabeth’s Honorary Surgeon from 2014 to 2017.  He is now Clinical Professor of Trauma Surgery and Innovation and Queen Mary University London, where he leads a team of trauma academics and computer scientists developing AI-powered decisions support tools for military and civilian trauma clinicians.

Colonel Tai’s talk touched on memories and learnings from his own time at OSH in the 1980s; his clinical training; an intensive military career; and medical advances through research and innovation in his various leadership positions.  Questions were taken from the audience of both budding medical students and CCF officers, ranging from technical AI-based conundrums, the challenges of the battlefield tourniquet, to “who was your favourite teacher?”.  A most enjoyable evening indeed.