Every Day Heroes: Dr. Peter Fitzgerald

VOLUME 4

DR. PETER FITZGERALD N O M I N AT E D F O R H I S T I M E SERVING AS PRESIDENT OF T H E M c M A S T E R C H I L D R E N ’ S H O S P I TA L

“Every Day Heroes” is a Department of Surgery initiative, celebrating the important work performed daily by our surgeons.

“We have a great culture, everyone pulls together to get the work done; our patients and families are phenomenal to work with.”

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lthough often out of sight, Dr. Peter Fitzgerald has been passionately serving the families of Ontario for the last few decades. Dr. Fitzgerald first joined the Department of Surgery as a pediatric general surgeon in 1992, working at McMaster Children’s Hospital and St. Josephs Hospital. In 2009, he stepped into the role of President of the McMaster Children’s Hospital, where he has served for the past 10 years. During his time as President, the hospital has seen significant growth and has become renowned for its major advancements in pediatric medicine.

McMaster University’s Department of Surgery has decided to honour Dr. Fitzgerald for his years of dedicated work by presenting him with an “Everyday Heroes Award.” The Award is intended to acknowledge our outstanding surgeons and their tireless contributions to the community.

Although modest about his work, Dr. Fitzgerald has made a huge impact in taking on his administrative role. He has led the hospital through times of change and has devoted himself to advocate for improved safety and care for all the families and patients within the McMaster Children’ Hospital.

The Department is proud and honoured to count Dr. Fitzgerald among their surgeons.

We had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Fitzgerald on his final day as President to ask him a few questions about his experiences and the changes he has been able to witness over the past 10 years. What we encountered was someone who was humble about his role and fully attributed the recent success of the hospital to the dedication

of the amazing staff who have been working passionately to better the lives of their patients. Dr. Fitzgerald’s enthusiasm for healthcare is evident and he has worked tirelessly to be able to improve the lives of those around him. Here, Dr. Fitzgerald answers questions about his experiences in this role.

Can you highlight three major changes in the children’s hospital since you started your tenure?

There have been many changes in the hospital over the past 10 years. The development of the Pediatric Emergency Department is one of the major accomplishments. Our pediatric visits went from about 15,000 per year to 55,000 per year.

That has been a phenomenal resource to the community, with specialized staff providing firstclass care in a child and youth-friendly environment.

These specialized staff members have been a big change in this community. Something more recent has been our major push toward a higher quality of patient safety. We have invested heavily in that, as many other children’s hospitals have. We have joined many safety collaboratives — the largest being Solutions for Patient Safety, which is a North American children’s hospital safety collaborative.

It has accelerated our patient safety platform and is making our hospital safer. I look forward to seeing that work continue in surgery and across the hospital. The last thing I’ve seen change has been the major growth of the children’s hospital.

McMaster Children’s Hospital is now the secondlargest pediatric centre in Ontario. It has Ontario’s largest single NICU and the largest inpatient mental health unit. Seeing that phenomenal growth over the decade has been wonderful to watch and be a part of.

What advice would you give to surgeons who are interested in hospital administration?

The advice I have given to surgeons who are interested in administration is that it is great if you want an opportunity to make change and have an impact. There are absolutely opportunities in hospital administration to do that. It is a difficult time in healthcare for many reasons — there’s lots of change; there are changes in how we are funded, there are changes in how we provide service, and there are advances in surgery and medicine. So, it is an exciting time, but with these changes comes the challenge of change management. But, if you want to have an impact, an administrative role certainly is one way to do it. It isn’t easy work, but it is definitely gratifying when you get an opportunity to help move things forward for your patients and staff and build a better place by having an opportunity to provide some input. It takes a big team to do that together, but I would encourage people who have an interest in it to look at it seriously as part of their career path.

What makes you most proud as you look back on your time as President of the Children’s Hospital?

There are lots of things to be proud of. I think it was a great opportunity for me to represent all the people that make our hospital great, whether that is our front line clinical staff, our administrative staff, or anyone else that is involved. Particularly in our children’s hospital, we have a great culture, everyone pulls together to get the work done; our patients and families are phenomenal to work with. Being able to represent all of our staff and our patients and

families at many tables over the years was really gratifying to me. I am proud I was able to work with really talented, incredibly hard-working individuals within Hamilton Health Sciences.

What was your biggest frustration in your administrative role?

The biggest challenges are always budgets.

It’s not much fun in healthcare with regards to budget issues as we are in a single-payer system in Canada. It presents lots of challenges with resources that continually seem to be contracting because our costs go up or the technologies become more expensive as they advance. The challenge each year to try to find ways to be more efficient was probably the most frustrating part.

However, it often brought out the best in people who worked incredibly hard to continue to provide really good resources for our caregivers to help our patients and families.

What is ahead for you in the next five years?

I’m now going concentrate on my pediatric surgery practice. I have maintained part of my surgery practice and I am going to continue that.

I did a lot of education before I went into hospital administration so I am going back to a formal teaching role in the medical school this fall. That will be very exciting for me as I love teaching and missed it a lot when I didn’t have time for it while doing this hospital administration job. My schedule up until now was usually back-to-back meetings all day long every day, so I am looking forward to more free time to concentrate on my clinical practice and educational responsibilities.