The Presenters Derek Rowlands B.Sc., M.D., F.R.C.P., F.A.C.C., F.E.S.C.

Dr. Rowlands qualified in Manchester. He obtained a First Class Honours degree in Physiology and was one of only two students (in a year of 100) to be awarded the degrees of M.B. Ch.B. with Honours.

After 6 months as the Medical Professorial HP and 6 months as Neurosurgical HS, he spent 2¹/₂ years at Hammersmith Hospital (now the Royal Postgraduate Medical School) working first in respiratory medicine and subsequently in neurology.

He then returned to the Manchester Royal Infirmary as Registrar in Cardiology and later as Cardiology Research Fellow.

He spent a year doing research in cardiovascular physiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, U.S.A.

He returned to Manchester as Lecturer in Cardiology and was appointed Consultant Cardiologist at the age of 32.

He is the author of “Clinical Electrocardiography” and has, by invitation, written the chapter on electrocardiography in all four editions of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine. His film on the normal and morphologically abnormal ECG won first place at the Sixth Biennial John Muir Medical Film Festival in 1986. He served for 15 years as sole editor of “Recent Advances in Cardiology” and for 5 years he was co-editor (with Professor Douglas Zipes from Indianapolis) of “Progress in Cardiology”. In all, he has published 13 books, 5 as sole author, 1 as co-author and 7 as editor or co-editor.

He has had a career-long interest in, and enthusiasm for, teaching and feels strongly “evangelical” about the need for dissemination of the understanding of electrocardiography and for the use of a logical, structured approach to electrocardiographic interpretation. He has extensive experience in teaching the ECG to general practitioners, to nurses, to medical students, to technicians and to doctors at all levels of hospital practice and has has given over 100 3-day courses in electrocardiography.