George Garrett Burniston was born in Sydney in 1914, son of George Benjamin Burniston, and his wife Daisy Belle. Educated at Sydney High School, and the University of Sydney, he graduated MB BS in 1939. He came from humble beginnings to become an architect of rehabilitation for persons with disability in Australia, and through his involvement in international organisations, he influenced the policy-making decisions within the United Nations and in the area of international rehabilitation.
After graduation, he was for two years a resident medical officer at Hornsby Hospital, before being commissioned as a flight lieutenant in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Medical Services. He served in Great Britain with the Royal Air Force (RAF) under the direction of its Civilian Consultant in Orthopaedics, Sir Reginald Watson-Jones, and the Senior Consultant in Orthopaedics Air Commodore, H. Osmond-Clarke.
Returning to Australia with the rank of Squadron Leader, he assisted in the organisation of a medical rehabilitation service for all physically disabled airmen and officers of the RAAF. He established and commanded the RAAF Medical Rehabilitation Unit at Jervis Bay, with the rank of Wing Commander. In 1946, he was seconded to the Australian Ministry of Post-War Reconstruction, and supervised a rehabilitation service for disabled ex-servicemen and women, whose impairment may not have been war-related. After discharge, he became Acting Coordinator of Rehabilitation, Department of Post-War Reconstruction and was appointed Senior Medical Officer to the Commonwealth department of Social Services in New South Wales, and was responsible for the medical inauguration of the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service.
In 1953, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the Rehabilitation Services of New York University, and spent 6 months of post-graduate studies in North America, Great Britain and Europe. In 1954, he became the Foundation Principal Medical Officer of the Commonwealth Department of Social Services, and chief medical authority in Australia for the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service. Throughout the 1950s, he served on various planning committees of international and local rehabilitation organisations, and in 1959, was appointed a member of the Repatriation Department’s Advisory Committee on artificial limbs, surgical aids and appliances. In the 1960s, he advised Sir William Hudson, chairman of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electrical Authority, on plans for the establishment of an industrial rehabilitation centre for injured workers at Cooma, NSW. In 1966, the New South Wales Government appointed him to advise on paramedical education in NSW.
He was appointed Director of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, the Prince Henry/Prince of Wales Hospitals, and senior lecturer, School of Medicine in January 1963. George was instrumental in co-ordinating an interdisciplinary facility for spinal injured persons at the Prince Henry Hospital. With his appointment as senior lecturer, and later Associate Professor, in Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of New South Wales, he was to become the first person in Australia to be appointed as an academic in his field. He promoted the role of allied health professionals as equal partners in the rehabilitation process. He was a committee member of the NSW College of Paramedical Studies and was one of the founders, and later Chairman of the Council of the Cumberland College of Health Sciences. He was the foundation president from 1980 to 1982, of the Australian College of Rehabilitation Medicine. He died before this College became the Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine of the RACP.
Perhaps it was serendipitous that World War II broke out during his early post-graduate training, as he served in Europe with the RAAF and met pioneers in orthopaedic surgery, neurosurgery and plastic surgery. Very early in his career he became aware that unless there was an outcome policy for the treatment of severely injured people, then excellent medical care did not always result in their return to a productive life. The success of the rehabilitation programs that he witnessed in Britain during World War II, was to be the basis of his involvement with the Australian government in the Department of Post-War Reconstruction when plans were laid for the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service, the pilot scheme for all such schemes in this country.
To accomplish the goals which health planners envisaged, and to reduce the load of social welfare benefits, it was necessary to encourage professionals to enter the field of rehabilitation medicine, a specialty which George referred to as the Cinderella of medical specialties. Through his perseverance, it became recognised as a principal speciality, offering a career structure for young doctors whom he encouraged to enter it. As well as doctors, he encouraged allied health professionals to pursue a career in this area.
He described himself as a fatalist, but fate played little role in his determination to place rehabilitation both in the broader context, and in the speciality of rehabilitation medicine, onto a firm footing in Australia.
Upon his return to Australia at the cessation of hostilities in the 1940s, he had become aware that not only were there a large number of severely impaired returned service personnel, but within the community there was an increasing number of people suffering the permanent effects of the crippling disease of poliomyelitis, which remained epidemic at that time, and of other infectious degenerative and traumatic conditions. The spin-off from the pioneering rehabilitation programs in the armed forces was that civilian personnel were able to access similar facilities in Australia. Ultimately, George held the view that these services should be decentralised into community health programs and within the teaching hospitals. Rehabilitation of people of all ages with congenital or acquired disability became his goal, and he encouraged service providers to ensure that there were medical and allied health facilities both in the hospitals and in the community at large, to ensure the maximum independence possible.
The plan integrated medical education, and social and vocational agencies to ensure a successful outcome. Funding was always a major problem for this less dramatic of medical treatments, and he firmly believed that governments should provide funds for the outcome measures he reasonably foresaw as necessary in allowing a flow-through of injured persons from access areas of hospital and medical facilities, back to an integrated community lifestyle. He died in the knowledge that planning and facilities were in place to ensure the fulfilment of his dreams. It was not, however, a sudden success, but an evolutionary progress as the benefits of his programs became evident.
George retired from his post as Director of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Prince Henry/Prince of Wales Hospitals in 1979, but continued to serve in an honorary capacity until 1985, when he left to continue his interest in medico-legal practice and international rehabilitation. Having encouraged many young doctors to follow a career in rehabilitation, he maintained an interest in them, always providing an attentive ear and good advice.
For his work in rehabilitation of the handicapped he was awarded an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (1969), and Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (1972). He was a Foundation Diplomate in Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine of the Australian Post-Graduate Federation in Medicine in 1970. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Medicine (1972), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Health in 1973. He served as a member of the World Health Organization Expert Panel on Medical Rehabilitation for over 20 years, and was a member, later vice-president of the Council of the Australian Council for Rehabilitation of the Disabled until 1973. He was also an advisor to the National Specialist Qualification Advisory Committee.
His interests outside of medicine were many and varied; the arts, theatre and literature. He was a great fan of Noel Coward. Agatha Christie would send him copies of her new books. He died peacefully en route to London on 27 June 1992, at the age of 77 years.