Jeffrey Sirzyk MD CCFP(EM) FCFP

William Glenn

After working emergency departments in Montreal and Lachute, Que, since 1991, Dr Jeffrey Sirzyk says it might be time for something new. “Life really changed when I turned 50,” he says. The son he adores had finished high school and enrolled at the University of British Columbia. After years of living alone, there was a special woman in his life. And he had a new job in the emergency department at Hawkesbury and District General Hospital across the Ottawa River in Ontario.

“My run-in with the police was the cherry on top,” Dr Sirzyk says.

You may recognize Dr Sirzyk’s name from news reports of his violent altercation with the 2 members of the Sûreté du Québec, the province’s provincial police force, in the emergency department of Lachute’s Argenteuil hospital back in March 2012. After refusing to divulge a patient’s personal information over the phone, Dr Sirzyk was manhandled out of his office and shoved against a wall, his arms twisted up behind his back.

Eventually, he was released and completely exonerated (while the 2 officers faced a series of internal investigations). But almost 2 years later, patients in Dr Sirzyk’s emergency department still ask “Are you that doctor who was in trouble with the cops?” He says that those “15 minutes” of notoriety ruined “the simple, anonymous doctor-patient relationship” he’d enjoyed for so many years.

About half of emergency department doctors only stay a few years and then move on. After 23 years, Dr Sirzyk says he is ready for some new challenges. Maybe he’ll take on a greater administrative load. He might do some work in Africa again—Dr Sirzyk learned Swahili a few years back for a stint in a mobile clinic near Lake Victoria in Tanzania. He’s even considering private practice.

“Unless you reflect on what you do, you just keep on doing it,” Dr Sirzyk says. But he suspects that 20 years from now “you could still find me in an emergency department, puttering about on a walker and wearing a pair of Depends.”

“It might be time for something new ... My run-in with the police was the cherry on top.”

PHOTOS (LEFT) Dr Sirzyk with lifelong partners Carolle Tremblay and his piano. PHOTOS (RIGHT, TOP DOWN) Dr Sirzyk with Hawkesbury hospital nurses, Christine Lefebvre and Collette Lanthier; Drs Eric Laviolette and Julie Maranda; and physician assistant, Collin Murray. (ABOVE) Dr Sirzyk with his son, Toby.

THE COVER PHOTO Dr Sirzyk appears on the cover with his father, Saul. Saul Sirzyk was born in 1921 in Rovno, Poland, and is the sole member of his family to survive the Holocaust. He speaks 8 languages, was a master butcher, and ran a successful window factory in Canada.

Photos: Andrée Lanthier, Longueuil, Qué

Notes

THE COVER PROJECT Canadian Family Physician has embarked on a project to assemble the portrait of family medicine in Canada. Each cover of the journal features a family physician chosen at random from our membership list, along with a short essay—a brief glimpse of the person and the practice. Over time, the randomness will become representative and the differences, taken together, will define what it is that all family physicians have in common.