My father, Peter Higgins, who has died aged 93, was a urologist in Stoke-on-Trent. A humane and considerate surgeon, he was committed to improving the patient experience in the NHS, particularly through his pioneering work in clinical audit. He also made advances in the treatment of conditions including acute urinary retention. He had a voracious appetite for history, was a collector of ceramics and had a lifelong, slightly disappointed love for Sheffield United.
He grew up in Sheffield, the son of Eileen (née Morris) and Henry, the manager of a small branch of Boots, and shared his small bedroom with his grandfather, an Irish steelworker. He was the first in his family to attend college. He studied medicine at Balliol College, Oxford, where he worked various jobs in the holidays: ice cream seller, Butlins entertainment officer. At Oxford he met Pamela Deane, a student nurse; they married in 1955.
He did his clinical training at the London Hospital, and in 1958, when their first son Robert was just over a year old, he began military service in the RAF. He was posted to Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the nuclear tests. At a lobster party, one of the officers ran a Geiger counter over the bellies of those present. After that, no more lobster.
In 1962 he undertook a one-year exchange in Montreal. For the last five weeks of the trip, the family camped across the US in the Mini they had brought over from Britain, Pamela was six months pregnant with their second son, Rupert. The Mini broke down at the top of the Rockies; he wrote the adventure for the Manchester Guardian. In 1964, Peter was working on his MCh thesis when he was summoned to Heathrow, where an Ilyushin 18 was waiting for a small surgical team. They operated on the Polish president that night. He later speculated that no Polish surgeon was willing to take responsibility: the patient, Aleksander Zawadzki, was clearly already dying, and did so later that year.
Peter was appointed as a consultant in 1967 at what is now Royal Stoke University Hospital, where I was later born. For years he was the city’s only urological surgeon and had to manage a heavy workload without creating a waiting list. His modest private practice included performing vasectomies in a consulting room in our home, where I assumed a string of ashen-faced men would arrive on Saturday mornings. When the time came, he performed the procedure himself, without any mishaps.
The Potteries provided our father with one of his most enduring passions: commemorative pottery, of which he amassed an important collection. After retiring to the Cotswolds and then to Oxford, he completed a PhD on prison medical care in the 19th century, which he wrote for his book Punish or Treat? (2007). He was a charming storyteller, and his droll humor was influenced by his favorite novelist, Evelyn Waugh. In their later years, he and our mother traveled extensively, until her death in 2018.
He is survived by Robert, Rupert and me, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and his sister Shelagh.