Gordon Roy West was the second son of William Arthur West, a prominent educationist in South Australia. He received his early education at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide, where he had a distinguished school career, obtaining a government bursary which qualified him for a science course at the University of Adelaide. He graduated BSc in 1904 and MB BS in 1908. After graduation he served as a resident medical officer at the Adelaide Hospital and then entered practice at Kaniva in Victoria.

Roy West was anxious to do postgraduate work, and with this in view was successful in obtaining the appointment of medical superintendent of the Adelaide Hospital in 1915. About this time he enlisted for service in the Australian Imperial Force, but owing to the shortage of medical men, was kept on at the Adelaide Hospital throughout the whole period of World War I until 1919. Upon relinquishing that post he entered into practice at Prospect, a northern suburb of Adelaide where he remained until his retirement in 1950, a period of thirty-one years.

Roy West was an example of the best type of general practitioner. A man of apparently tireless energy, he managed a very large practice and at the same time kept abreast of the advances in medical knowledge. In April 1940, he was admitted to Membership of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He was appointed a visiting physician to the Northfield Infectious Diseases Hospital soon after its establishment, and when the Hospital was taken over by the South Australian Government in 1940 he was appointed honorary consulting medical officer and later honorary consulting physician. He was also medical officer of health for Prospect and Enfield. At the age of sixty-five years he retired from active practice, but for the next five years worked at the Repatriation Department and later at the Northfield Mental Hospital.

Roy West married Miss Marie Scott in 1910. They had two sons, Leonard now a physician in England, and Robert, a physician in Adelaide and a daughter, Mrs Kenneth Stokes.