Dr. Robert H. Usher

On May 25, 2006, the MUHC lost one of its most beloved physicians when Dr. Robert H. Usher died of cancer at the age of 76. Usher’s innovative work in neonatal medicine and the treatment of respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) set new international standards.

Robert Usher was born in Montreal in 1929 at the MUHC’s Royal Victoria Hospital, where his father worked as a pediatrician. He enrolled in medicine at McGill University and in 1957 accepted a one-year research position at the Vic, where he studied RDS in prematurely born babies. Usher’s development of the Usher Needle helped reduce the neonatal mortality rate of children with RDS by more than 50 percent. In the 1960s, his breakthrough research into the metabolic processes of RDS led to the widespread introduction of the Usher Regime, the intravenous infusion of dextrose water with sodium bicarbonate. This increased the survival rate even further, a widely celebrated result given the highly publicized 1963 death from RDS of President Kennedy’s newborn son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, which had made the disease something of a cause célèbre.

In 1959, Usher became the director of the Vic’s neonatal intensive-care unit and remained in the post for 41 years. He was also a professor of both obstetrics and pediatrics at McGill. During his illustrious career he received many honours, including being made an honorary fellow of the British Association of Perinatal Medicine in 1991. He was awarded the Prix Letondal of Quebec in 1993, the Neonatal Award of Canada in 1995 and the prestigious Virginia Apgar Award, given annually by the American Academy of Pediatrics, in 2000. In 2006, Usher received the Ross Award for excellence in the field of pediatric research and child advocacy from the Canadian Pediatric Society. In 1998, McGill University established the Robert Usher Fellowship in Perinatology to fund graduate physicians and scientists intending to follow in Usher’s footsteps: a fitting tribute to a true MUHC pioneer.

Usher’s legacy of innovative neonatal care will enter a new era when the MUHC's redevelopment is complete and services are underway at the Glen campus in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units of the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Montreal Children’s Hospital of the MUHC. With Women’s Health and Pediatrics side-by-side, the MUHC will be in an even stronger position to provide the kind of ground-breaking care to vulnerable infants for which Robert Usher will long be remembered.