Professor Richard Beard

Professor Richard Beard, who has died aged 80, was Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, and a champion of new approaches to the care of pregnant women and their children that are universally practised today.

Beard was one of the pioneers in the development of fetal monitoring during labour. In his MD thesis, for example, he demonstrated that the pH balance of a foetus during labour is a good indicator of whether the unborn child is suffering metabolic or respiratory problems. This helps to determine whether to continue labour normally, or whether a forceps delivery or caesarean section might be the best option. Such “acid-base evaluation” continues to be routinely used.

In the late-1980s, working under Sir Stanley Clayton at King’s College Hospital, Beard’s work on the physiology and management of diabetes in pregnancy gained him international recognition. He demonstrated that poor control of maternal blood glucose levels during labour leads to fetal distress, a discovery that led to the use of intravenously administered insulin infusions for diabetic women in labour.

Richard William Beard was born in Sussex on May 4 1931 and educated at Westminster School. He read Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and qualified from St Bartholomew’s Hospital.

It was during his National Service in the RAF in 1957 that he had his first experience of caring for women and their babies when, after only six months training in the discipline, he was placed in charge of the obstetric and gynaecological department at the Changi Hospital, Singapore, responsible for the care of the wives and children of 10,000 service personnel.

Further appointments followed at Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital and at the Chelsea Hospital for Women. In 1964 he was appointed Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital. In 1968 he joined King’s and, three years later, became Professor and Head of Department at St Mary’s Paddington.

Richard Beard’s main concern was always first and foremost the wellbeing of the mothers and their babies. As well as supporting the development of neonatal intensive care at St Mary’s, he ensured that t he homely decor of labour rooms and postnatal wards at St Mary’s created a sense of welcome and calm unusual for hospital wards at the time.

While at the hospital he established a long-term collaboration with a team of bio-engineers to develop fetal monitoring techniques and to investigate the origins and management of chronic pelvic pain in women. He also set up a maternity risk management group and persuaded the St Mary’s Trust to develop risk management for all specialities in the hospital, long before this became standard in the NHS.

Beard served as expert adviser to the Commons Social Services Select Committee from 1979 to 1984 and was a member of the Standing Medical Advisory Committee to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Services from 1981 to 1983. As Consultant Advisor to the Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health, he was co-author of the Maternal Mortality Reports from 1986 to 1992. He was adviser and external examiner in Obstetrics and Gynaecology to the faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong and, as a council member, chaired many committees of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

After retiring from St Mary’s, Beard was invited by Professor Peter Richards to join Northwick Park and St Mark’s Hospital, where he continued his research into the problem of chronic pelvic pain.

He also collaborated with his second wife Irene in setting up the charity Book Link, providing schools in Ethiopia with over three million books sourced from publishers in Britain. When his wife was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease he was instrumental in helping to set up the Sheffield Institute Foundation for Motor Neurone Disease, which raised enough money to build the first research institute for MND in Europe.

In his leisure time, Beard enjoyed travelling, tennis, offshore sailing and attending concerts.

He is survived by his wife and by three sons and a stepdaughter.

Professor Richard Beard, born May 4 1931, died January 13 2012