Brian Day

Day was raised in Toxteth, a working-class area of post-war Liverpool, England. He was the eldest of four children in a family with strong Labour views. Both his mother and father were socialists. Day has attributed his shift from the political left to the centre-right to his disenchantment with the British labour movement's jurisdictional inertia and contributions to inefficiency in health care.

Day attended the Liverpool Institute, the same high school as two well-known schoolmates, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. His family's neighbourhood could be tough. Day has a permanent scar on a finger from a knife fight when he was 10 years old. His father, a pharmacist, was killed in 1981 by hooligans looking for drugs during riots in the neighbourhood. The possible contribution of misdiagnosis by British doctors for the death of Day's mother in 1986 is cited as his dissatisfaction with the British health system.

Day entered medical school at age 18 at the University of Manchester, from where he graduated in 1970. After an initial interest in general surgery, which he pursued as a postgraduate in Manchester and at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, he focused on orthopaedics.

He obtained his medical degrees, MB ChB from the University of Manchester, and post-graduate qualifications in both internal medicine and general surgery. In July 1973, Day moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In 1978, Day completed his training and a M.Sc. degree at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

In 1979, Day received the Canadian Orthopaedic Association's Edouard Samson Award for outstanding orthopaedic research in Canada. Following a fellowship in traumatology, in Basel, Switzerland, Oxford, and Los Angeles, he began practice at the Vancouver General Hospital. After starting in trauma, he developed an interest and expertise in orthopaedic sports medicine and arthroscopy.

As an orthopedic surgeon, he earned an international reputation for performing arthroscopic surgery on hips, knees, shoulders and elbows. He has been the medical officer for national and international sports teams and events, including the Canadian Davis and Federation Cup teams as well as Olympic teams. International patients have included professional athletes, such as English Premier League players, and Olympic medallists from countries as far away as Russia and Australia, as well as many world-famous celebrities, actors, and dignitaries. Day is regarded as being instrumental in the introduction of arthroscopic joint surgery in Canada.

Day's patients have included athletes from leagues such as the CFL, NHL, NBA and the English Premier League. He has said he chose to treat athletes individually rather than as a salaried club physician, citing potential conflicts between a team's interest in a quick return to play and a player's medical interest. In 2004, at the invitation of orthopaedic surgeon Antonio Castro, he travelled to Cuba to teach arthroscopic techniques and was made an honorary member of the Cuban Orthopaedic Association.

During the early 1980s, Day played a foundational surgical role in the development and implementation of the Arthrobot in Canada, the first robot to assist in surgery, created by a team led by biomedical engineer James McEwen and UBC engineering physics graduate Geof Auchinleck. The Arthrobot system was capable of responding to the surgeon’s voice commands to manipulate and position the patient’s limb during orthopedic surgeries. Building on this work, Day went on in 1984 at UBC Hospital to become the first surgeon in the world to introduce the clinical application of robotics in arthroscopic surgery.

From 1970 to 2014, Day wrote more than 150 scientific articles or book chapters, in areas of orthopaedics and arthroscopic surgery / sports medicine, and on the topic of health policy.

US 'Conservatives For Patient Rights' commercial controversy

In May 2009, Day drew criticism after he was shown in a series of television ads for a US lobby group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights that opposed President Obama's health care reforms. Day appeared on the television program BNN on May 11, 2009, to clarify that he issued a letter distancing himself from the ad. He also pointed out that Obamacare was based on private insurance and private delivery, the opposite of what many Canadians believe in.

In 1995, Day founded Cambie Surgery Centre, a for-profit Vancouver clinic. Day is the facility's medical director, and one of its 40-plus shareholders. The Cambie Surgery Centre has 50 full- and part-time nurses and 125 doctors performing operations and other procedures for up to 5,000 patients a year, which may make it the busiest private hospital in Canada.

Day has said he decided to set up the Cambie Surgical Centre, which is non-union, after decreased government funding in the mid-90s cut his operating time at UBC from 17 hours a week to about six. The start-up was during the premiership of Michael Harcourt. To demolish an old nursing home and build a surgery centre on the site, Day needed to raise about $5 million. He succeeded in convincing notable Vancouverites such as the late Milan Ilich and Jack Poole, as well as Kip Woodward (chair of Providence Health Care and future chair of Vancouver Coastal Health), and 19 others including Jim Wyse and Hugh Magee, to commit $100,000 each with the remainder financed by the Royal Bank of Canada.