Layton F. Rikkers, MD, FACS, an emeritus professor of hepatobiliary, pancreatic, and gastrointestinal surgery at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, will receive the Distinguished Service Award—the ACS’s highest honor—at Convocation during Clinical Congress 2024 in San Francisco, California.
The award, established by the ACS Board of Regents in 1957, recognizes the exceptional and continuous service of an ACS Fellow, as well as a career with outstanding emphasis on patient care and commitment to the ideals of surgical practice.
Dr. Rikkers, known as “Bing,” said, “I’m certainly very honored and humbled. I realize that there are hundreds of other people who are just as deserving.”
Education and Career
Dr. Rikkers completed his medical degree at Stanford University in California, where he conducted research in the heart transplant laboratory of Norman E. Shumway, MD, FACS. Dr. Rikkers was a general surgery residency at The University of Utah in Salt Lake City and conducted hepatological laboratory research under Frank Moody, MD, FACS, at The University of Utah, and Sheila Sherlock, DBE, FRCP, FRCPE, at the Royal Free Hospital in London, England. He also completed a surgical hepatology fellowship with W. Dean Warren, MD, FACS, a Past-President of the ACS, at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Rikkers became a University of Utah faculty member, where he rose to acting chair of the Division of General Surgery. Later, he joined the University of Nebraska Omaha as a professor and chair of the Department of Surgery, before serving as interim dean of the University of Nebraska College of Medicine for 2 years. Dr. Rikkers then moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison as the A. R. Curreri Professor of Surgery and Chair, where he remained for 24 years before becoming an emeritus professor.
Service to the ACS
Dr. Rikkers became an ACS Fellow in 1980 and has held many committee and leadership roles at the College. These include positions on the Young Surgeons Committee, Surgical Education in Medical Schools Committee, Liaison Program Committee, and the Committee on Coaching the Next Generation. In addition, he served on the Board of Governors for 6 years (2005–2011) and as a First Vice-President of the ACS (2013–2014).
“The thing I am most proud of and enjoyed so very much was conceiving the Surgeons as Leaders course and directing it,” he said about his many contributions to the ACS.
At the behest of past-Executive Director Thomas R. Russell, MD, FACS, Dr. Rikkers helped create this course. It is meant for surgeons who currently serve or aspire to serve in leadership positions to gain skills in the principles and practice of leadership, from the operating room to the boardroom. It remains popular among aspiring surgeon leaders.
Because he also served as a leader for various other organizations, Dr. Rikkers was able to help advance the connections of the College to other surgical associations and societies. His leadership roles included chair of the American Board of Surgery and the Surgical Journals Editors Group, and as president of the Society of Clinical Surgery, Halsted Society, Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract, Central Surgical Association, Wisconsin Surgical Society, Society of Surgical Chairs, and American Surgical Association.
Mentorship and More
Throughout his professional life, Dr. Rikkers heavily emphasized mentorship and the education of students, residents, and faculty. “You remember people early in your career who promoted you,” he said. “The reason I had the opportunities I had was because I had some wonderful mentors. I felt an obligation to give back because I had been so generously mentored by so many people.”
Noting there are several people he still advises, Dr. Rikkers added, “I’m just so very proud of what these people have done. They just take off like rockets.”
As a result of his clinical excellence and enthusiasm for education, he also has been memorialized several times, including in the Layton F. Rikkers, MD, Master Clinician Award of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract. He has several more namesakes at the Department of Surgery at the University of Wisconsin: the Layton F. Rikkers Surgery Education Retreat, Layton F. Rikkers Chair in Surgical Leadership, and Layton F. Rikkers Surgical Society, an alumni group.
