Hospital community mourning death of 'fantastic' anesthetist

Sault Area Hospital staff are mourning the death of Dr. Scott Morrison.

The anesthesiologist died suddenly last Wednesday at the age of 56.  

Morrison's death comes as a shock.

“He was certainly active. He swam regularly, he did paddle board sports. It was just out of the blue,” said Dr. Phil Dopp, SAH chief of anesthesia, in a phone interview with SooToday.

Morrison had practiced as a full-time anesthetist at SAH since 2014.

“Everybody was shocked. He was 56 and he was well. People had seen him the day before and were talking to him. It’s just shocking. It’s unbelievable,” Dopp said.

Morrison was popular with SAH staff.

“He was a lot of fun. He got along well with everybody. He was friendly. I got a call from one of his students that we had 10 years ago saying: ‘Oh my gosh, I just heard. Dr. Morrison kept in touch with me.’ He certainly made lots of connections with the people he worked with and maintained those relationships,” Dopp said.

Morrison’s expertise was appreciated by both surgeons and patients.

“He provided excellent anesthesia care. The patients liked him. His knowledge was fantastic. The surgeons routinely said: ‘Scott gave such a great anesthetic.’ He was professional with his patients. People were always very happy when they had him. He had a very good demeanour. Obviously the time right before surgery is a stressful period of time for patients and he was able to put people at ease. We have two minutes to gain their trust (before going into the operating room), to put them at ease, and he did a great job at that,” Dopp said.

Morrison is the third SAH anesthetist to die in the past 13 months.

Dr. Robin Harwood died of cancer May 9, 2023 at the age of 55.

Dr. Scott Wilson’s death at ARCH was announced in April 2023.

“That’s three people in their 50s in the last 13 months. To lose three in just over a year is statistically abnormal,” Dopp said.

“To think that another anesthetist in Sault Ste. Marie passed away at a young age — without being sick — everybody was shocked and saddened. We’re a close knit group in the operating room. We all feel like we’ve lost a friend.”

Morrison’s death reduces the number of anesthetists at SAH down to six, five of them full time.

“Ideally we’d have eight or nine people,” Dopp said.

Dopp said SAH continues to do its best to keep up with the surgical workload with the help of locums.

“It’s a challenge. You need an anesthetist for every OR, so if you don’t have them you just can’t run an OR. Given that we were short for the last two years because my two other colleagues had cancer and they were off for about a year before they passed away, we developed a great locum pool in the last couple of years. We’ve probably had about 15 locums, with eight to 10 coming fairly regularly. We’ve had to cancel very few ORs. We plan to run four operating rooms per day and we’ve had to cancel very few operating rooms.”

SAH has moved quickly to adapt following Morrison’s death.

“After Dr. Morrison I was able to get somebody to cover these next two weeks and throughout the summer it looks like we’re going to be able to cover most of his weeks. Right now it doesn’t look like we’re going to impact in a negative way but it’s always up in the air because you’re hoping you find a locum for this week or that week,” Dopp said.

SAH continues its recruitment efforts in the search for more anesthetists. 

“We’ve been recruiting for the last two years. There is someone starting at the end of June. We were getting very close to being full complement but now we're going to be short again. There are some people interested but haven’t committed to moving to the Sault yet. Certainly we’re going to continue working with the Recruitment and Retention Committee to see what they can do to help us,” Dopp said.

“We’re very sad about the untimely passing of Dr. Scott Morrison. Physicians and staff sorely miss him. We’re all grieving the loss,” said Dr. John Heintzman, SAH chief of staff at Monday’s SAH board meeting.

Morrison’s obituary was published by SooToday May 24 and can be seen here.