Dr. Hamilton Hall
Recipient of the CSS Lifetime Achievement Award for 2018
Hamilton Hall completed his medical degree at the University of Toronto and immediately after internship joined CARE/MEDICO to travel to Malaysia where he was stationed in a rural hospital as part of a Canadian team of doctors, nurses and laboratory technicians.
Dr. Hall returned to Toronto for his orthopaedic residency which concluded with a fellowship in medical education at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He began orthopaedic practice at the Women’s College Hospital in 1973, subsequently moving to the Toronto General Hospital, to the Orthopaedic and Arthritic Hospital and finally to the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre where he remains on the active orthopaedic staff. Dr. Hall is a Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto.
Because of his interest in education, in 1974 Dr. Hall began a lecture series to offer better understanding and positive advice for patients suffering with back pain. Those lectures became the Canadian Back Institute which expanded into the CBI Health Group, now with over 13,000 employees and the largest rehabilitation company in Canada. Dr. Hamilton Hall continues to serve as its Medical Director.
In 1994 Dr. Hall organized a small group of surgeons with a particular interest in spine to form the Canadian Association for Disorders of the Spine (CADS). Dr. John Hurlbert attended the 1999 CADS meeting and invited the members to join interested neurosurgeons at the First Canadian Congress of Spinal Surgery the following year. Based on that fusion, Drs. Hurlbert and Hall co-founded the Canadian Spine Society. Dr. Hall is presently the Society’s Executive Director.
Dr. Hamilton Hall has received Outstanding Paper and Poster awards from the North American Spine Society and the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine. He was recipient of the Laurie Chute Award for the Best Undergraduate Clinical Lecturer at the University of Toronto and the NASS Henry Farfan Award for outstanding contributions to the field of spine care.
Dr. Hall’s concept of a syndrome approach to classifying mechanical back pain is an essential component of several provincial initiatives to improve spine care. In addition to numerous professional publications he is the author of the best-selling Back Doctorseries of books for the lay public.