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On a mission to bring physicians together
By Girard Hengen
Dr. Allan Woo is on a mission: He wants to put a face to the name of as many physicians as he can during his year as president of the Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA).
He also wants physicians to connect more with each other instead of working in silos, thinking they have no support or nowhere to turn for guidance and advice.
“We need to improve our collegiality,” Dr. Woo says. “We need to understand where each of us is coming from – primary care, specialist care. Since being on the board, I have become more aware that everyone has a different focus and our experiences and training lead us to have different biases. We need to bridge some of those gaps and make everything a bit easier.”
To that end, he has vowed to meet physicians wherever they want, whenever he can.
“Sometimes those conversations are difficult, but there’s a way to get through it. The old doctors’ lounge played a big role 20 to 30 years ago, when people didn’t communicate like we can now. You met each other and put a face to a name, but now that’s changed.
“We need to go back to that. We need to see who the people are and make that connection on a personal level so that we’re more collegial with each other.” T he personable and approachable Dr. Woo is well positioned to lead Saskatchewan’s physicians as they adapt to a changing health landscape. The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) is still new and finding its feet. Dr. Woo is an SMA representative on the committee that is attempting to hammer out new practitioner staff bylaws with the SHA.
“The biggest change right now is the transformation of health care,” notes Dr. Woo. “As a membership organization, the SMA has to make sure doctors understand what we can provide for them. A lot of physicians are still in solo practice and they look to the SMA for support and guidance. We’re also here to provide oversight on the interaction between physicians and the new health authority as well as with the Ministry of Health.”
Recent SMA presidents were instrumental in bringing physicians to the table in the discussions leading to the formation of the SHA. As a result, says Dr. Woo, physicians are in leadership positions within the core of the SHA. There is no turning back.
“The change is full on and we need to just embrace it and figure out how we are going to keep moving it forward,” Dr. Woo says. “What the system was when I first started medical school and when I did my residency and in the early part of my career maybe wasn’t as fully effective as it is today. We need to recognize that what we did was fine at the time, but now we need to do better.”
In some respects, Dr. Woo is an unlikely president of the SMA. Unlikely because a career in medicine was by no means a certainty.
When he was in high school in Regina, where he was born in 1970, a questionnaire on career options suggested he become an actuary. Medicine wasn’t an option.
“Looking back, I don’t ever recall in my high school years that medicine was where I wanted to be,” Dr. Woo says. “I was treasurer of my high school SRC (student representative council), and I thought I liked business and commerce and the financial aspect of that. I really did think I was going to be an accountant.”
After he took the questionnaire, he had the thought that he wasn’t “a math geek … I had to look up what an actuary actually did. That was the financial influence. To go in a medical direction was quite different. Medicine wasn’t on my radar. So why I did it, I don’t know. I still scratch my head and wonder why.”
His father is a pharmacist and owned his own drug store in inner-city Regina. His older sister graduated from the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine in 1989, the same year Allan completed his first year of pre-med.
“I thought pharmacy was an option, some sort of health science and maybe combining it with a business, like my dad,” he says. “I never really strayed too far from some sort of health focus and that’s where things led me.”
After his second year in pre-med, he was accepted into the College of Medicine in 1990. He graduated in 1994 and completed an orthopedic residency at the U of S in 1999. He soon took a broader interest in the profession, becoming involved with the orthopedics section of the SMA, attending Representative Assemblies, and joining the SMA Board of Directors in 2014.
Dr. Woo served on the executive of the Board of Directors and was elected president of the SMA at the 2019 Spring Representative Assembly in Saskatoon. It’s quite a jump from a teen looking for direction and guidance to a leadership position in Saskatchewan’s medical profession. Dr Woo attributes some of it to luck – being in the right place at the right time – and some of it to a need to get involved.
The wider world beckoned the young Dr. Woo after he completed his orthopedics residency at the U of S. He was accepted for a six-month Hip Fellowship in Bern, Switzerland, studying under Dr. Reinhold Ganz, who has pioneered hip surgery procedures.
“This is 1999,” notes Dr. Woo. “The Internet was still new, everything was still in print. We studied from textbooks and paper. I didn’t have a good idea of what I was getting into. You could not Google who this person was or what to expect going overseas. A lot of it was new coming from Saskatchewan. I had to get a visa, I had to get a passport, I had to get Swiss money and find a place to live.
“That was definitely an eye-opener and I would recommend anyone to go overseas and live for six months. It’s very different from visiting, for sure. That was my first real travelling experience, being in a foreign country, living on my own, trying to manage day to day.”
Dr. Woo returned to Canada for a Hip and Knee Arthroplasty Fellowship at the University of Toronto in 2000, and a Spine Fellowship at the University of Alberta in 2001. He met his future wife, Maya – a pharmacist – between fellowships.
“I was engaged to my wife, and we weren’t sure where we were going to go. She had ties in Saskatoon that made coming back ideal.”
Dr. Allan Woo with his wife and children.
As luck would have it, after working for a year and a half in Edmonton, Dr. Woo noticed an opening for a spine surgeon in Saskatoon. He returned in 2004 to start a practice with one of his mentors, Dr. Ken Yong-Hing. He remains in practice in Saskatoon with the three colleagues he started with – Dr. Mario Taillon, Dr. Mark Ernst and Dr. David Kim. Maya is now manager of the Saskatoon Cancer Centre pharmacy. The couple have two children, Ethan and Tien.
“I was thankful for the opportunity and thankful for the job,” Dr. Woo says. “The options at that time were not plentiful. It’s more luck than anything else that an opportunity presented itself when it did. The stars were aligned for me to return to Saskatoon. I understand the stresses residents feel when they have completed their program and are looking for a place to work.”
The journey home has led to the presidency of the SMA, but Dr. Woo dismisses the notion that he has reached the pinnacle of the profession.
“There are other physicians who have many more accolades and awards, and are deserving of more recognition than I. I’m just here to represent the group, try to make sure the messaging is consistent and carry on for the next set of presidents who are going to follow me.” ◆
