‘World’s Number One Surgical Coach’: Rodney Peyton, an Internationally-Renowned Trauma Surgeon, Author, Trainer, Keynote Speaker, and Founder of RPeyton, Remains at the Forefront of Advances in Medicine, Medico-Legal, and Educational Activities

“The success of the project management approach has directly led to Rodney’s collaboration with international experts such as Professor Todd Hutchinson and Professor Ian Rouse of Australia and Dr. Wale Eglegbede from the Mayo Clinic, the USA, to introduce this approach into the healthcare environment.”

Rodney Peyton OBE, MD, MPM, has been involved in the healthcare industry for over 40 years. He is an internationally renowned trauma surgeon, author, trainer, and keynote speaker who has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a surgeon and educator, being regarded by many as the world’s leading surgical coach. He holds a Doctorate in Medicine, a master’s degree in Education, and graduated in Law. He is currently the chair of the Global Advisory Council to the International Institute of Project Management.

Mr. Peyton is regarded as a leading authority on surgical and medico-legal education. The demand for his expertise has seen him teaching, coaching, and mentoring around the globe, delivering keynote speeches and prestigious lectures. And in the process, he has won a plethora of international awards, including an OBE from the Queen for his services to medical education.

He remains the only person who has been awarded five Fellowships from the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians in the UK and Ireland. His core belief is that his role as a leader is about adding value to and making a difference for others. The ability to bring about change for a group or society is the key distinguishing feature between success in personal life and success as a leader.

Mr. Peyton is the founder of RPeyton, which assists its clients, their legal advisors, and the courts in understanding better the unique aspects of medical evidence in individual cases so that they can make more informed decisions.

The firm is based in Dungannon, Northern Ireland.

Rodney Peyton: The World’s Number One Surgical Coach

Rewind: From the Outset of His Career

Rodney Peyton has a lifelong interest in education and, in particular, how people learn. This developed during his military service when he was instrumental in developing a system for delivering the most effective and efficient management in a team approach to those injured on the battlefield known as Battlefield Advanced Trauma Life Support (BATLS), which continues to be improved and updated, being used by many forces around the world.

In civilian life, when he first took on his role as Head of Faculty Development with the College of Surgeons in England over 30 years ago, there was a limited acknowledgment that teaching adults depended on particular skills that could be systematised and taught. Most professions at that time followed an apprenticeship model, whereby trainees learned on the job by working alongside more senior colleagues. Even at the post-graduate level in universities, lectures were delivered by those who had been taken on by the university to undertake research projects with little or no regard to their ability to teach and ensure that students learned from them. The rapid advances of knowledge and techniques in recent years have made an apprenticeship model redundant. It has now been recognised that learning no longer has an end-point in any profession, and even the most experienced in every specialty must be committed to lifelong education.

Matters first came to a head in the late 80s, when there was a revolutionary change in operative technique with the development of laparoscopic or ‘keyhole’ surgery. This was a radical change in the way surgery was practiced, and that highlighted that even very experienced consultants required safe, effective, and rapid training in new techniques. Rodney was asked by the Royal College of Surgeons of England to develop such courses, basically from scratch. He created ‘Training the Trainers’ courses that were pioneering at the time but are now taught somewhere in the world on an almost daily basis. The main theories are captured in his bestselling textbook ‘Teaching and Learning in Medical Education’ (1998).

What was then a revolutionary idea has become mainstream, with  most university and post-graduate trainers now being required to have a formal teaching certification.

About training and surgery, Rodney developed what is now known as the Peyton Four Stage Technique for teaching complex surgical procedures, which have been widely researched in academic institutions from America to Australia and from Sweden to South Africa. The design, development, and delivery of these techniques on a global basis has resulted in him being called the ‘World’s Number One Surgical Coach.’

Peyton Four-Stage Approach: To the Rescue

As we have seen, change is inevitable. As an entrepreneur and businessman with over 30 years of investing globally, Rodney has always been fascinated by business concepts, systems, and project management approaches that he has also promoted in the medical environment.

With the day-to-day management of his investments and business interests, coupled with his experiences of delivering his training and coaching practices within the medical environment, Rodney has seen first-hand the necessity to develop a systems approach for effective management.

He is also a well-recognised authority on medico-legal issues, including training doctors and lawyers on the subject. This brought him into contact with the developing concept of legal project management and how this approach has introduced project management techniques, which are widespread in the industry, into the legal profession, which has revolutionised the practice of law to the extent that it is now taught as a major subject in most law faculties.

The success of the project management approach has led Rodney’s collaboration with international experts such as Professor Todd Hutchinson and Professor Ian Rouse of Australia, and Dr. Wale Eglegbede from the Mayo Clinic, the USA, to introduce this approach into the healthcare environment. Ultimately, the objective is to apply project management approaches to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of all aspects of healthcare services, thereby resulting in better patient outcomes.

He always has simplified and streamlined his training techniques throughout his career using a systems approach, remembering that the ‘system’ stands for ‘Save Your Self, Time, Energy, and Money.’ A specific example has been the introduction of the Peyton Four-Stage Approach, as mentioned above. Not only did he have to design and develop a system itself from scratch, underpinned by a detailed knowledge of how individuals learn new techniques, but he also had to adapt the technique into a properly managed system to ensure the quality of both training and the patient outcomes. This further led to the necessity for appraisal and assessment. His book “Appraisal and Assessment in Medico-Legal Practice” (2000) has formed the basis for the ongoing growth and development of medical practitioners in many countries to guide them throughout their years of practice.

Rodney Peyton: Motivating Individuals

In the late 80s, as Head of Faculty Development in the Royal College of Surgeons, England, and backed by his military experience, he was instrumental in introducing an American system, Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS), into widespread civilian practice in the UK. All significant changes will meet resistance, particularly in a conservative profession such as medicine, and the introduction of this system was no exception. The somewhat flattened governance structures in the healthcare professions, with senior individuals having a lot more autonomy than they would have in industry, meant that the majority would not accept transactional leadership from the top down. What is required is transformational leadership. This type of leadership is about the ability to influence others' thoughts, feelings, actions, and behaviors, thereby guiding them for a specific purpose to bring about change, using influence, not authority, to assist, motivate, and inspire.

The transformation began with an understanding of how people are motivated. All could agree with the potential result, that of providing the best possible care for patients. However, people differ in the way they receive and process information. Some are very action-orientated and want the facts. Others are knowledge-based, wishing to know in detail the research and the reasoning behind any changes, figures, and statistics for results. The third group is very system-orientated and wants a precise sequence of steps to follow. The fourth group is very socially orientated, wanting to know who else was adapting the methods and what they felt about the experience.

Each required a different set of messaging and an acknowledgment of their underlying expertise. They needed to feel they were being respected and that the changes were being brought in with their assistance rather than being enforced. Over two to three years, acknowledging how different individuals wished to be communicated with, taking time with face-to-face meetings and courses, the system went on to be adopted throughout the British Isles and beyond.

Future Arrangements: Going Above and Beyond

This is an exciting time for the company, which is about to enter a new managed growth era. This has come about by collaboration with acknowledged experts in project management from the United States, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. Standing still is not and never has been an option, as Sheri Tree, Founder of BANK Technologies, stated, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Rodney Peyton has been at the forefront of advances in medicine, medico-legal and educational activities for many years, all of which have provided an excellent grounding to the next phase of growth into the realms of medical project management on an international scale.

About training and surgery, Rodney developed what is now known as the Peyton Four Stage Technique for teaching complex surgical procedures, which have been widely researched in academic institutions from America to Australia and from Sweden to South Africa. The design, development, and delivery of these techniques on a global basis has resulted in him being called the World’s Number One Surgical Coach.”