Mr Shepard works at the Royal Bolton Hospital and the BMI Beaumont Hospital, Bolton. He is a Consultant Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgeon specialising in surgery of the lower limb. His particular fields of interest are sports injuries and knee surgery. He regularly performs arthroscopic (keyhole) surgery of the knee, knee ligament reconstruction and joint replacement surgery, both total and partial.
Mr Shepard qualified from Leicester Medical School in 1990 and following his house year he taught anatomy at Leicester University for a year before entering surgical training. He trained in Leicester and Liverpool before being awarded Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1995. He then entered higher specialist training in Orthopaedics and Trauma and trained in Liverpool and Manchester before being awarded the Intercollegiate Fellowship in Trauma and Orthopaedics in 1999. He was awarded his Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training in 2001 and was appointed as a Consultant in August 2001.
During his training Mr Shepard undertook several travelling fellowships to Boston, Denver and Adelaide to work with acknowledged world experts in aspects of knee surgery.
Mr Shepard regularly attends and presents his research at local, national and international conferences. He is a member of the BASK and ESSKA, the national and European societies of knee surgery.
Mr Shepard was appointed as one of the sports orthopaedics consultants to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002. His interest in joint replacement has lead to him becoming an evaluating surgeon for both a minimally invasive partial joint replacement and for a system for revising failing total joint replacements. He teaches total joint replacement to junior surgeons in a course that includes live video-link surgery and minimally invasive partial joint replacement to fully qualified surgeons.
Mr Shepard was a keen sportsman and has played rugby, football, squash and badminton. He represented his University at sailing and his medical school at football. Although injuries have stopped his involvement in contact sports he still enjoys racquet sports. He is married to Alison and they have a son, Luke. Both Alison and Gordon are regular attenders at Anfield and Luke is on the waiting list for his season ticket!