WHAT’S UP AT POP?
Peri Operative Programme Péri-Opératoire (POP)
Newsletter August 2023
PERI OPERATIVE PROGRAMME PÉRI OPÉRATOIRE (POP)
TEAM 2022-2023
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
The New MUHC Prehabilitation Clinic:
As of October 2021, POP was given the authority by the MUHC to operate as a clinic. The new MUHC clinic is staffed by 3 MUHC employees; 1 full-time administrative assistant (Anastasia Parashis, 1 full-time physiotherapist (Do Jun Kim) and a half-time nutritionist Jade Corriveau). The clinic is situated beside the Preoperative Clinic and the Central Operating Room Booking (CORB). The patients that come to the clinic are referred by the surgeons at the MUHC and other hospitals in Montreal. In the first year of operation, the clinic dealt with 184 high risk patients of different surgical specialties and seen by the multidisciplinary team that prescribed individual programs for each patient. Besides the 3 MUHC staff, POP supported financially 1 Nurse, 1 data entry staff and 1 data analyst. Two nurse volunteers provide psychosocial counselling to patients in need. Also, the President and Director serve as volunteers.
Dr. Gillis and Dr Carli set up a focus group meeting with all the Prehabilitation Clinic staff before the inception of the Prehabilitation Clinic. It was then followed by a MUHC steering committee which includes as stakeholders, 1 patient representative, 1 surgeon, 1 anesthesiologist, 1 researcher, 3 MUHC administrators (finance, perioperative, nursing) to oversee the progress of the clinic over 3 years.
D J Kim
Anastasia Parashis
Jade Corriveau
Linda Edgar
Carol Common
Research Program:
During 2022-2023, 4 Master, 3 PhD, 2 Post-doc students worked on their research at POP, aided by grants from Rossy Cancer Network, ESPEN and MITACS. From this research, 10 publications, in high impact journals, were written. Dr. Chelsia Gillis, who did her Master with POP (McGill University) and a PHD at the University of Calgary, returned to continue her, and lead the research at POP. As of January 2022, she is an Assistant Professor in the McGill School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition.
We had the pleasure of having Dr. Lucie Opatrny, President and Executive Director of the MUHC, visit the POP Clinic recently. Dr. Carli led the POP Team, showing Dr. Opatrny the POP Prehabilitation Program in action. We are very thankful to her for taking the time to visit our clinic.
CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS
The 3rd World Congress of Prehabilitation Medicine was held in London, UK from July 4-6, 2023 (1st World Congress was organized in 2017 in Montreal, QC Canada). Several of the POP team went over to the conference, presenting abstracts (10) of their work in the clinic and in research. Dr Gillis gave several talks and Dr Carli the Ernest Henry Starling lecture.
Every Wednesday, Lunch-time Rounds are held to learn from presentations given by the various students doing research in prehabilitation and physicians involved in prehabilitation. Knowledge from different aspects of prehabilitation is shared and discussed.
From May 2023 till recently, a focus group, composed of the POP Team, has met virtually/in-house to discuss quality improvement, planning and establishment of protocols to be used in developing the POP Clinic Program to be able to run the Clinic efficiently and for the benefit of the patients. A key element of the POP program is that it is a patient-centric program wherein the medical professional and the patient work together to establish goals.
Every Fall for the last 5+ years, POP has run a workshop (in person and virtually during the pandemic) for anyone interested in developing a prehabilitation program. Physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, kinesiologists, mental-health professionals, nutritionists, from all over the province and the world, attend these workshops. In the workshops, all who attend learn how our prehabilitation program is run and how it is structured. Each workshop has 25-50 people in attendance.
POP received visitors, interested in our prehabilitation program, from Germany, England, and the USA this year, and from the Montreal area hospitals as well (CHUM, JGH, Cité de la Santé, Sherbrooke and Rosemont-Maisonneuve).
STAFF AND STUDENTS
Dr. Enrico Minella, who was with us for several years, lastly as a Fellow, returned to Italy and now works with Dompe Pharma. Dr. Gabriele Baldini, anesthesiologist and lastly head of the Pre-Operative Clinic, returned to Italy to start a prehabilitation department at the University Hospital in Florence. Dr. Miquel Coca, anesthesiologist, who has been with us for several years as a Clinical and research Fellow, has been offered a Clinical Staff position at the Rosemont-Maisonneuve Hospital teaching here in Montreal. He continues to work with Dr. Heather Gill of the MUHC in vascular research and is still involved with POP. Dr. Vanessa Ferreira received her PhD for her research at POP and has taken up a position at Takeda Pharma. Bhagya Lakshmi Ramappa Tahasildar, who has been with us for the last 4 years, is moving to Ottawa where she will work in helping to develop a prehabilitation program at the Ottawa Research Institute.
All our research fellows, Dr. Stefan Saric (an anesthesiologist from Australia), Dr. Dominic Engel (an anesthesiologist from Switzerland), Dr. Giuseppi Testa (a geriatrician from Italy), have returned to their own countries.
Dr. Janius Tsang, anesthesiologist, has joined the MUHC and is completing her Master In Experimental Surgery and will be working at the Prehabilitation Clinic one day a week as an attending physician. We continue to work with Dr. Amal Bessissow, internist, who heads up the Medical Pre-Operative Clinic presently.
Dr Miguel Trottrier, resident in geriatrics at McGill spent 3 months in our Prehabilitation Clinic and has a staff position now at the Sherbrooke University Hospitals.
Sarah Atoui (PhD) Kenny Drummond (MSc) and Genevieve Lambert (MSc) completed their research with POP during the last 3 years and have moved on in their careers elsewhere.
FUNDRAISING EVENTS 2023
During the pandemic, it was impossible to have fundraising events. Slowly but surely, we are hopefully going to be able to resume some of the major fundraising events of the past.
D J Kim ran a half-marathon run in September 2022 and organized a team from POP to walk/run 5K in April 2023. The team managed to raise over $20,000 for our clinic. Patients, staff, and families all participated. He has again organized another run to raise funds; this run will take place in September 2023.
DONATIONS
We are eternally grateful to the Louise and Alan Edwards Foundation for their large donations over the last 6-7 years. Also, we would like to thank the Birks Family Foundation for their continuing support. The Montreal General Hospital Foundation has been very generous with their fundraising efforts and management of the POP account. Many patients have shown their appreciation of the program and have supported our fundraising efforts.
We also would like to thank all our volunteers for the immense amount of time spent participating in the program, supporting patient care.
PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY BY SUPPORTING THE
PERI OPERATIVE PROGRAM (POP)
Information about POP and donating can be found on the here: