Mr Donald Sammut

Mr Sammut is a Consultant Hand Surgeon who works mainly at Sulis Hospital Bath with a smaller practice in London.

He qualified as a doctor from Charing Cross Hospital, University of London, and trained first as a General Surgeon in London and Bedford (FRCS Eng), before training in Plastic Surgery, in London, Liverpool, Salisbury, Billericay and Manchester (FRCS Plast). His higher training included Hand Fellowships with specialists in Strasbourg (Guy Foucher), London (David Evans), and Barcelona (Marc Garcia Elias), with an additional Fellowship in Craniofacial and Aesthetic Surgery in Paris (Daniel Marchac).

In 1993 he was appointed Consultant Hand Surgeon at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol and he has, since then, specialised exclusively in Hand Surgery. He is particularly well known for reconstruction of the hand after trauma and paralysis as well as Anatomy and Biomechanics.

He established the Hand Unit at Frenchay Hospital, Bristol and the Congenital Hand Unit at the Bristol Children's Hospital and ran these services between 1993 and 2003. He left the NHS in 2003 and has been in full-time private practice since.

Over the period 1999 -2009, he also held a simultaneous appointment as Congenital Hand Surgeon in the Humanitas Hospital in Milan, Italy.

Mr Sammut is extensively involved in the Organisation, Education and Training of Hand Surgery in Britain and the rest of Europe, and was until recently examiner and exam setter, for the final examinations in Hand Surgery for both the British and European Diploma (English, French, Italian). He continues as tutor to the British Diploma in Hand Surgery. He has served two periods on Council of the BSSH.

Since 1999 he has traveled annually to work and teach in Leprosy communities, initially in India and, since 2009 in Nepal. He founded the charity Working Hands. and leads a team of 8 to three hospitals in Nepal each year, operating, and teaching local surgeons and UK surgeons who travel with him. He holds the post of Visiting Senior Lecturer at Kirtipur Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal.