History was made this Tuesday at Sensenbrenner, the hospital serving Kapuskasing.
For the first time since moving into its current building in 1988, two surgeries were performed simultaneously.
“We had enough anesthesiologists, we had enough surgeons and we had enough nursing staff and support staff to accomplish this,” reports Dr. Jessica Kwapis, a general surgeon and Sensenbrenner chief of staff. She hopes two-surgeries-at-once becomes the norm.
“We were doing this as a trial run, to learn if there’s addition equipment we need to purchase, how many nursing staff for example we would need to book on a day when we run two rooms.”
Dr. Kwapis expects it to become part of the regular rotation a couple times a week by fall.
She says there are a lot of reasons why this is significant.
“I think one of the big reasons is it signals stability to surgical coverage for patients in our region. This is something that really is unusual for hospitals of this size and communities of this size.”
Dr. Kwapis gets into much more depth during our interview, which you can hear below.
