OLD BOYS
Empowering the next generation
A pioneer in his field, with a Medal of the Order of Australia awarded in 2006, oral and maxillofacial surgeon Old Boy Dr John Arvier ’70 remains modest when talking about his work and achievements.
“Seeing people living in terrible poverty brings home how lucky we are in Australia,” he says. “You can’t not go then. It gets into your system and you always feel like you could do a bit more.”
In his 35-year career as a specialist, John has combined public hospital work and a busy private practice with training the next generation of oral surgeons in Australia and overseas. Since 2003 he’s also been on the sidelines at State of Origin, Super 15 and Wallabies rugby matches, to treat facial lacerations, broken jaws and cheekbones.
‘A bit more’ has included trips to Congo and Somaliland with Australian Doctors for Africa, and helping to establish university training in Bangladesh, PNG and Cambodia. John and his colleagues from the Australian and New Zealand Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons have developed the curriculum and student examinations.
“I had ambitions as a child of playing rugby for Australia, so hanging around the players is the next best thing,” he says. “My son Matthew and I were the first father and son pair to wear the same dark blue jersey (No.8) for the First XV.”
“There’s that old adage – if you want to feed a man for a day, give him a fish. If you want to feed him for a lifetime, show him how to fish. It’s a very superficial analogy, but we thought training people who could show others was logical.”
Countless patients in Australia and overseas will be glad John chose surgery over rugby. Since his first trip to Bangladesh in 1991, he has made 38 largely self-funded overseas trips as a volunteer surgeon.
At home in Queensland, John also taught and supervised the next generation of specialists. Surgical colleague and current BGS parent Dr Geoff Findlay met John as an undergraduate and found his overseas trips fascinating. “John would come speak to us, and at the end of the lecture, throw up a few slides of his volunteer work,” Geoff says. “You could see it took a huge amount of energy. The cases are complex, and the conditions he’s had to work under are nothing like what we take for granted here in Australia.”
John’s work overseas falls into two categories. “Conditions like cleft palate are treated in children here, but in many developing countries they go untreated and grow. Road trauma is also a huge problem – roads are chaotic and no one wears seatbelts.
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