Following Up
A former AHFMR researcher follows a different career path.
Dr. David Matheson sometimes wonders what his life would be like if he had continued along the research path he followed in the early days of his career. For most of the 1980s, he was involved in establishing and supervising his lab at the University of Calgary, which conducted research into immune deficiencies. He was one of AHFMR's first-funded Scholars, and it was an exciting time to be starting out in Alberta.
"The AHFMR grant made a big difference to me. It provided security to my salary, and definitely helped support my lab operations," he says. In 1987, however, Dr. Matheson was recruited to the University of British Columbia to become head of the Division of Immunology at BC Children's Hospital. He went on to become vice-president of medicine there. After almost ten years of dealing with all the complex problems involved in operating any hospital-and the inevitable crises-he asked himself what he really wanted to do and where he would be most effective. In 1998 he left BC Children's to establish his own consulting company in the area of administrative medicine.
Since then, Dr. Matheson has worked on numerous projects related to the health system. In 2007 he was one of a team of three consultants brought in to conduct a review of the central supply system at St. Joseph's Hospital in Vegreville (east of Edmonton) after unclean surgical tools were discovered. The story dominated news headlines for several weeks. "Our report and recommendations generated a lot of action and a lot of change with respect to infection control and other areas. That is very gratifying to see," he affirms. Two years ago, he was asked to research and develop a strategic plan for the delivery of pediatric care within Ontario's provincial healthcare system. More recently he was called in to conduct a major review of intensive-care systems in Nova Scotia; over the course of a week he visited every ICU in the province.
"I love the flexibility of my work, and the opportunity to work from home after all those years of long hours," he says. Seeing more of his wife is an added advantage.
Though his skills are applied in different ways nowadays, his ultimate goal is the same as it was during his days as a researcher: improving healthcare delivery for everyone's benefit. "There is so much to be done to help clinicians, to make things easier for them at the systems level and ultimately help them do the right thing. That's how I am contributing now."