Robin Cotton, MD, receives Founder’s Award
As a teenager, Robin Cotton was an aspiring clarinet player hoping to make his musical mark in his native England. But when his teacher delicately asked, “Are there other options?” he reconsidered and set his sights on medicine.
Patients and parents around the world can be thankful for the teacher’s candor. It pushed Cotton to pursue a groundbreaking career as a pediatric otolaryngologist and head and neck surgeon. He will be honored with the Cincinnati Pediatric Society’s Founder’s Award this month, adding to a long list of accolades for his achievements.
Cotton earned his MD from the University of Cambridge, England, in 1966, then completed residencies in general surgery at United Birmingham Hospital in 1968 and otolaryngology at the University of Toronto in Canada in 1971.
“I came to Cincinnati to do a fellowship with Donald Shumrick, chair of the Department of Otolaryngology-Maxillofacial Surgery at UC,” says Cotton. “I spent half my time working in the adult world and half in the pediatric arena. There was no such thing as a full-time pediatric otolaryngologist back then.”
He soon found that he preferred pediatrics. “I liked working with the kids, and I liked the atmosphere at Cincinnati Children’s,” he says. Although he had a job waiting for him in Toronto when his fellowship was over, he decided to stay put.
“When I moved here, I was a single parent, with a 14-month-old and a 3-year-old,” he recalls. “I just wasn’t up for making the move back.”
Instead, he became the first full-time director of Otolaryngology in 1974 (working with Glen Bratcher who was already here part-time) and the first full-time surgical subspecialist at Cincinnati Children’s, joining established general pediatric surgeons Lester Martin, Bill Richardson and Joe Cox. Within a short period of time, he was so busy that the medical center had to bring in another otolaryngologist, Allan Seid, to handle the caseload.
Building reputation
Cotton attributes his success to being young at the right time. “The fellowship in Head and Neck Surgery I did with Dr. Shumrick prepared me in a way my contemporary colleagues were not. They weren’t comfortable doing complicated airway procedures on children,” he says. “I traveled to other leading children’s hospitals to teach my counterparts how to do them. The result is that they would operate on the simpler cases and refer the difficult ones to me. So, our program grew. I acquired a huge amount of experience with complex patients pretty early on. My outreach to other hospitals came back to me 10-fold between 1975 and 1995.”
But Cotton is quick to add that developing the Otolaryngology program at Cincinnati Children’s was very much a team effort. He is grateful to his colleagues Charles Myer III, MD; Sally Shott, MD, and Paul Willging, MD, who worked alongside him in those early years.
By 1998, Otolaryngology was performing more than 1,000 complex procedures annually. Patients were coming from all over the world to see Cotton and his colleagues. “I knew I needed to reduce my workload,” he says. “I also decided I wanted to develop a legacy. I didn’t want people to come to me as an individual for care. I wanted them to come to Cincinnati Children’s. I approached Tom Boat, who was then chair of Pediatrics, about starting the Aerodigestive and Esophageal Center. He helped me navigate the silos of medicine and surgery to establish a multidisciplinary center that would treat patients with complex airway, lung, digestive, sleep and feeding disorders.”
The center, which opened in 2000 with Cotton as director, was the first of its kind in the country, but it soon became a model for others. Today there are between 20 and 30 centers, and aerodigestive medicine has become an important aspect of pediatric practice.
Lasting impact
Cotton estimates the Division of Otolaryngology here has trained almost 100 fellows. Of those, 25 hold major leadership positions at other pediatric hospitals, he says. “We have contributed significantly to setting the pediatric otolaryngology standards in this country and Canada.”
When it comes to teaching, Cotton always advises his fellows to treat every child they operate on as their own. “A child is the most cherished person in a parent’s life. Families place a huge amount of trust in us. Never forget that, and you will do well,” he says.
Cotton also emphasizes maintaining a good work/life balance. “Family comes first,” he says. “When I was a single parent, I had to juggle the demands of a career and family. It made me appreciate the challenges professional women face, and it shaped my philosophy on the importance of gender neutrality in the workplace. I believe leaders can have a great effect on staff burnout. I do my best to guard against it – in myself and in my team.”
Cotton has worked very hard to achieve success, but he acknowledges that he’s been very lucky.
“I am truly grateful to my fellow pediatricians who have been so supportive through the years,” he says. “It means a great deal to me to receive the Founder’s Award. Local recognition is more important to me than national recognition. To have the respect in your own community of the people who’ve known you the best is the most important part of my professional life.”
