Bluewater Health's chief of staff is hopeful the addition of two general surgeons in Sarnia will eliminate the need to temporarily pause services in the future.
Dr. Mike Haddad is welcoming Dr. Imad Aad and Dr. Sanjay Patel to the hospital's professional staff.
Dr. Aad completed his medical degree and general surgery residency at the Lebanese University in Beirut, Lebanon. Before joining Bluewater Health, he was a general surgeon at CISSSAT in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec.
He's also the founder and president of the Canada Chapter of Health Outreach to the Middle East, a non-profit dedicated to providing medical relief and missions in the region. Dr. Patel completed his medical degree at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, followed by general surgery training at Western University.
He then pursued a fellowship in Multi-Organ Transplant and Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgery, also at Western University.
Most recently, Dr. Patel practiced at Health Sciences North in Sudbury and served as a lecturer and coordinator with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM).
Dr. Haddad is thrilled to welcome them onboard.
He said Bluewater Health was forced to pause general surgeries three times over the past six months.
Three of five surgeons left in a short period of time, creating gaps in service.
"I think we're past that phase (of pausing services)," said Haddad. "Over the last few months, we've had to rely on surgeons from different hospitals coming in to help us out at times. Despite that, we still had some gaps. When we had those gaps, we had to send patients away to different hospitals like London. Hopefully that's behind us now."
No surgeries were cancelled or rescheduled due to the shortage but wait times did increase.
Dr. Haddad is hopeful they'll be able to hire one more general surgeon in the near future to bring the complement back up to five.
At the Sarnia site, 402 elective general surgery cases were handled in 2024/25, meaning non-urgent/emergent, pre-scheduled surgeries.
Just over 4,500 endoscopy procedures were also undertaken.