Olive Scott

Olive Scott FRCP ( Sharpe; 25 June 1924 – 4 March 2007) was an English paediatric cardiologist. She was the first person in Britain appointed to a consultant position in paediatric cardiology.

Early life Olive Sharpe was born on 25 June 1924 in Carlisle, Cumbria. She attended Carlisle and County High School for Girls and completed her medical studies at Sheffield Medical School in 1948. She later married James Scott, a reproductive immunologist.

Career Scott was a junior doctor at Liverpool, where she worked with the cardiologist John Hay and developed an interest in children's congenital heart defects. Her postgraduate research with Hay earned her a doctoral degree in 1957. The same year, she became the first person in the UK to perform a balloon atrial septostomy after learning how to perform the procedure from its inventor, William Rashkind. In 1976, she established the first unit in a British hospital dedicated to non-invasive cardiac diagnosis through echocardiography, at Killingbeck.

Scott's most famous research work was a collaboration with her husband James Scott: they showed an association maternal anti-Ro and anti-La autoantibodies and congenital heart block in their children. She also co-authored a key textbook, Heart Disease in Paediatrics, which was first published in 1973 and was revised in three editions. In her career, she trained many foreign doctors in her speciality. She was often known for her perfect English diction, and this helped her in her foreign affairs.

Later life Scott retired from medicine in 1986. She died in Harrogate on 4 March 2007.