Sam Bugis, MD, FRCSC
Dr. Bugis is a General Surgeon with subspecialty training and expertise in Head and Neck and Endocrine Surgery. After General Surgery residency at the University of Alberta, he did a Clinical Fellowship in Head and Neck Surgery at McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario and then a research fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston Texas. He has practiced in British Columbia for 30 years. He is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Surgery, UBC. He is a recipient of the General Surgery Teacher of the Year award and was a Fellowship Examiner for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in General Surgery. Dr. Bugis has held numerous leadership positions including Medical Staff President at Royal Columbian Hospital and Chief of Surgery at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, BC and Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton Alberta. He has been Head, Section of General Surgery and Specialist representative on the BCMA Statutory Negotiating Committee. Currently, Dr. Bugis is Vice President, Physician Affairs and Specialist Practice, Doctors of BC.
His interest in Global Surgery was sparked by attending the Bethune Round Table Conference held in Vancouver in 2013. Shortly thereafter he took the Canadian Network for International Surgery’s (CNIS) Essential Surgical Skills Instructor Course and a few months after that was in Moshi, Tanzania for a two week session teaching and supervising that course. Since then, he has visited Developing Countries in Sub Saharan Africa and South America on multiple occasions. He has also obtained the Graduate Certificate in Global Surgical Care from the Branch for Global Surgical Care at UBC. Currently, He is Board Chair of the Canadian Network for International Surgery and a Fellow and Examiner for the College of Surgeon of East, Central and Southern Africa.
Ryan Falk, BSc, BA, MD, CCFP(ESS), FCFP, DTM&H, MGSC
Rural Representative
Dr. Falk is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Surgery and a Clinical Instructor in Rural Family Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He is a family physician who practices both Enhanced Surgical Skills and Rural Generalist Medicine in the Beaufort Delta Region of the Northwest Territories, where he was the Clinical Lead for Surgical Services for 9 years. Dr. Falk is currently the chair of the Continuing Professional Development Committee for ESS at the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada (SRPC) and the chair of the Member Interest Group in ESS at the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC). Having completed the Masters in Global Surgical Care (MGSC) program in 2021, his research interests include rural surgical services in Canada and other high income countries, as well as the role of non-specialist physicians and non-physician clinicians in the provision of surgical care globally. In addition to over a decade of experience in a mostly indigenous region of the Canadian Arctic, he has also been involved in a surgical program in northern Ghana since 2018.
Faizal Haji, MD, PhD, FRCSC
Faizal Haji is a pediatric neurosurgeon at the BC Children’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Haji is also co-lead for the Surgical Education Research Interest Group and Associate Director of the Global Surgery Lab within the Department of Surgery at UBC.
Dr. Haji completed undergraduate studies followed by medical training at McMaster University. After graduating from medical school in 2008, he completed his neurosurgical residency at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. During residency, Dr. Haji obtained a PhD from the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto, alongside completing research fellowships at the Ronald R. Wilson Centre for Research in Education at UHN and the Learning Institute at the Hospital for Sick Children. His dissertation focused on the effect of fidelity, complexity and cognitive load on learning and transfer of procedural skills for novices engaged in simulation based education. Upon completing neurosurigical residency and becoming a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2018, Dr. Haji completed a postgraduate fellowship in pediatric neurological surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), where his research focused on capacity development for postgraduate surgical training in resource-limited settings. After training, Dr. Haji spent two years as a pediatric and adult neurosurgeon at the Kingston Health Sciences Centre and Medical Education Scholar at Queen’s University. Dr. Haji’s academic interest is in health professions education, with his program of research focusing on three areas: (i) optimizing the design of simulation-based education for medical and surgical skills training with particular focus on cognitive load and learner engagement; (ii) surgical decision making and factors influencing the quality of education and assessment during surgical training; and (iii) translating innovations in health professions education to facilitate surgical capacity development in resource-limited settings through global surgical partnership.
Emilie Joos, MD, FRCSC
Dr. Joos is a Clinical Assistant Professor with UBC’s Department of Surgery. Dr. Joos is a practicing general surgeon and trauma surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital. At the completion of her surgical critical care training, she was appointed as a clinical instructor in trauma at University of Southern California. She is an instructor for the Advanced Surgical Skills for Exposure in Trauma and an Advanced Trauma Life Support course director. She has been working with Médecins Sans Frontières since 2015 and was deployed several times in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2017 she completed her Emergency Response Unit training with the Canadian Red Cross and is now on the roster for deployment. Dr. Joos is a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada in General Surgery and obtained her Critical Care accreditation from the Royal College in 2014. She is a Fellow of the American Board of Surgery. Dr. Joos is a course director for the Advanced Surgical Skills for Exposure in Trauma, the Definitive Surgical Trauma Care and the Advanced Trauma Life Support courses. She is the provincial chair for ATLS in British Columbia and the Surgical Care Surgery Fellowship program director at UBC, in addition to being the Associate Medical Director at the Branch for Global Surgical Care and the Co-Lead of the Global Surgery Lab.
Shahrzad Joharifard, MD, MPH
Dr. Joharifard is a pediatric surgeon with a passion for global health, particularly in conflict and post-conflict settings. She has extensive experience in sub-Saharan Africa. Immediately after completing general surgery residency at UBC, she began working as a surgeon for Partners in Health at JJ Dossen Memorial Hospital, a remote referral hospital in Harper, Liberia. There, she served as one of only 11 surgeons in the entire country of 4.7 million people—and only 1 of 3 outside the capital. Prior to entering medicine, she spent two years working with the International Rescue Committee in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone. While a medical student, Dr. Joharifard then spent a year in Rwanda, where she conducted epidemiological research and worked with Partners in Health to establish surgical services in Rwinkwavu and Butaro. She has also worked at Kolofata District Hospital in the Extreme North of Cameroon, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa, Mbingo Baptist Hospital in Northwest Cameroon, and Gondor University Hospital in Gondor, Ethiopia.
Dr. Joharifard holds an AB in History cum laude from Princeton University, an MD from Duke University, and an MPH in Clinical Effectiveness from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed her residency in General Surgery at the University of British Columbia in 2017, followed by fellowship in Pediatric Surgery at CHU Sainte-Justine at the Université de Montréal in 2020. Dr. Joharifard is currently an attending Pediatric Surgeon and Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at British Columbia Children’s Hospital. She is also an active surgeon with Médecins Sans Frontières and has been supporting the essential surgical skills training course in Aweil, South Sudan with Dr. Emilie Joos.
Rupinder Khotar, GenDN, PsychDN, BScN
Rupinder is the OR Nursing Supervisor at St. Paul’s Hospital. She has been an OR nurse since 1992 and worked as one of the educators of the Providence Health Care (PHC) Perioperative Nursing Program for 10 years before taking over her present role. She is the past Chair of the Operating Room Nurses Association of Canada (ORNAC) Standards Committee, served as President Elect from 2011-2013 and as ORNAC President from 2013-2015.
Phyllis Kisa, MBChB, FCS ECSA, MMed (Surgery)
LMIC Representative
Dr. Phyllis Kisa completed medical school at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. She then worked as an intern doctor and as a medical officer (general doctor) in the surgical department at St. Mary’s Hospital Lacor, Uganda. Following this, she attained her MMED in General surgery from Makerere University and Fellowship in General Surgery of the College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa. Soon after, started a pediatric surgical fellowship training with the College of Surgeon of East Central and Southern Africa (COSECSA), a hybrid training with part in Uganda and 18 months (2014-mid-2015) at BC children’s hospital in Vancouver, Canada in pediatric general surgery and pediatric urology. She returned to BC Children’s hospital in 2018 to complete a formal clinical fellowship in pediatric urology becoming their first clinical fellow and the first fellowship trained pediatric urologist in Uganda. She is lecturer in pediatric surgery at Makerere University College of Health Sciences in Kampala, Uganda, and Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Division of Urology and the Branch of International Surgery. She is keen on fostering training and collaborations, and have a strong interest in research, particularly research into perioperative nutrition.
Gary Redekop,BSc, MD, MSc, FRCSC
Dr. Redekop received his MD from the University of Western Ontario (UWO) and completed neurosurgical residency and fellowship training in cerebrovascular surgery in the Division of Neurosurgery at UWO. He completed graduate studies in the molecular biology of growth factors and angiogenesis, and then fellowship training in Interventional Neuroradiology at the University of Toronto.
He has worked in close collaboration with colleagues in surgery, anesthesia, radiology, and neurology to develop a multidisciplinary service integrating microvascular and endovascular approaches to cerebrovascular disease. His clinical practice also includes the surgical treatment of epilepsy.