You Can’t Grow Beyond Your Tools: Dr. Matt Muirhead
As the Bow Valley grows and the medical field continues to modernize, the Canmore General Hospital continues to evolve. Our hospital is changing, as demonstrated by the current renovation of the Emergency Department and the addition of new doctors to our surgical staff. Canmore Hospital Foundation caught up with one of the new surgeons, Dr. Matt Muirhead. Matt joined the Canmore Hospital team in June 2022 and described the change for him as a “full circle experience.”
Matt is a Maritimer from Nova Scotia. He grew up in a small town just outside of Halifax and spent the first part of his career working in rural New Brunswick. Later, he moved to Alberta and spent 17 years in Red Deer doing colon cancer and breast cancer surgeries in hospitals, both large and small. In 2022, when the opportunity to return to practicing medicine in a small town was offered, “there’s no way I could say no,” Matt told us. “I’ve spent a lot of leisure time in Canmore over the years, and my long-term plan was to end up here. I’m a big skier, and I love the mountains. When I heard about this opportunity, I knew I needed to hear more.”
The offer also inspired Matt, who called his long-time friend and colleague, Dr. Sean Gregg. The two “essentially jointly applied for the job,” Matt shared. “We decided to go after this together.” They have experience working in tandem and knew their impact could be enormous in the Bow Valley if they came as a package. Matt hit the ground running, and Greg will be joining our hospital’s surgical staff in the summer.
Matt expressed gratitude when asked about his feelings about the past 18 months. “Honestly, I’ve started enjoying practicing medicine again,” he told us. “Things have been so constrained in the busy centers for the last little while that it was very frustrating not being able to provide timely care. When I first came here and could look out for people with quality, timely surgery, it felt amazing. It's been a nice chance to step back and be able to provide that type of care again.” He also recognized how wonderful the community is here in Canmore. “I have really noticed and enjoyed how appreciative the community is. So many patients have been incredibly welcoming and appreciative of the fact that they can get high-quality care close to home in a place that they’ve chosen to be and build a life in.”
With his surgical practice, Matt brings skills, experience, and ambition that are already reshaping and elevating the quality of care Canmore Hospital can offer. “We’ve already started to do some procedures that have never been done locally before.” In January, Matt performed the first-ever laparoscopic colon cancer surgery in the Bow Valley.
“There are certain things we can’t or shouldn’t do in the Valley. But there are some things that can be done safely and close to home. Since I’ve been here, I’ve done a handful of procedures that have led to people being able to have surgery locally for the first time. I’m really passionate about helping us grow as a hospital, expanding and modernizing what we can offer locally.”
When people are sick and in need of care, it amplifies an already stressful and difficult situation to add a commute to the city or a years-long waitlist. Matt told us that “a lot of patients vocalize those issues, and while we’re playing a bit of catchup, we’re definitely getting there.”
Basic public health care is funded by the provinces, but there are so many needs that go beyond the basics, and the role of the CHF is to fill in the gaps. “The funding the hospital receives outside of the Foundation really just gets us to a baseline,” said Matt, “it’s important not just to maintain what you’re doing already but to be able to grow. A good example is laparoscopic surgery, an area where our equipment has frankly been substandard for a long time. Things won’t be replaced if they’re serviceable. What we’ve always had has been okay for standard care, but to push beyond that, you need a new, more modern set of tools.”
As Matt said, you really cannot grow beyond the tools you have. While our hospital and staff perform to the highest possible standard with what they have access to, we cannot elevate the level of care they can provide without first offering them new, upgraded, or additional tools. As our new surgeons bring new skill sets to the Bow Valley, we have the welcomed challenge of stepping up to match them.
If you’d like to contribute to our current campaign to raise funds for life-saving medical equipment in the Canmore Hospital’s operating rooms, click below.