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John Semple Chief of Surgery at the New Women's College Hospital

The Women's College Hospital will break ground for a new building starting in 2009. A new Ambulatory Care Centre will consolidate ambulatory services with a strong focus on surgery. Renovations are already underway in the current building to develop offices and clinics for surgeons under the direction of Surgeon-in-Chief John Semple. They currently run five operating rooms, with eight to be built in the new facility. Health Minister George Smitherman has designated the hospital as an "academic ambulatory surgery facility" for the LHINs. Surgery will be a major focus; the hospital's results will be used as benchmarks for the entire province.

The Women's College Hospital will also house programs focusing on musculoskeletal disorders, including osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, and it will be a hub for teaching sports medicine, led by John Theodoropoulis. Ethan Grober will head a Male Infertility Program in conjunction with Mount Sinai Hospital. His unit will be joined with the well established Female Infertility Program.

Michele Landsberg, the Honourable Laurel Broten, Marilyn Emery and the Honourable George Smitherman, (left to right)
Photo compliments of Van Valkenburg Communications

The hospital will participate in a search to recruit general surgeons for minimal access procedures and breast cancer surgery programs. Plastic surgery affiliates from other hospitals will do breast reconstruction and surgery for melanoma at WCH.

John Semple and Family

John is enthusiastic about working with the new President and CEO Marilyn Emery, who was previously Vice President of Nursing at St. Joseph's Health Sciences Centre, and with Vice-president and Chief Administrative Officer Maureen Adamson, who came from the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.

John will be using the operating room as a laboratory for studying new technology, new models of care, efficiency and instrumentation. He has recently visited Calgary where they have developed an excellent model for ambulatory orthopaedic surgery. There are international societies for ambulatory surgery, but currently there are very few Canadian representatives participating. John sees the future of surgery as becoming largely ambulatory and hopes to help develop Women's College as an academic ambulatory surgical facility that will carry out teaching, research and the delivery of new models of care. The original concept of the Department of Surgery's role in an Academic Ambulatory Centre was developed with the input and direct support of Richard Reznick. John's research in regenerative medicine is described in the Fall 2003 issue of the Spotlight.

John has also conducted research on weather patterns and ozone on Mt. Everest over the past several years that have resulted in multiple visits to Himalaya, and several publications.

John is a keen jazz/blues musician and plays in a blues band that has played in some of the seediest bars in Toronto. These activities are for the most part tolerated and supported by his wife Anna and his four children Adam, Leah, Matthew and Logan.

M.M.




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