A Saskatoon physician has been honoured with the prestigious Dennis A. Kendel Distinguished Service Award for his efforts to improve health care in the province.
According to a College of Physicians and Surgeons news release, the award was given to Dr. Bruce Cload for “outstanding contributions to physician leadership and to physician engagement in quality improvements in health care in Saskatchewan.”
Part of the reason he was recognized was because of his role as one of the physicians who organized the emergency response after the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in April 2018.
“So I was one of the people in the emergency department who oversaw the care that was delivered. We would co-ordinate the movement of all the patients, so we oversaw the logistics of the entire operation,” said Cload.
“That was a really emotionally draining and exhausting situation. I remember I had worked a lot that week already, and we were kind of working overnight on that. When we had actually made it through the night in emergency and managed to get everyone the care they deserved, I think it was a mixture of being relieved, being very proud of my colleagues and thinking that went pretty OK.”
Cload was quick to acknowledge all the other health care workers who stepped up during the tragedy, for their role in him being recognized for the award.
“I was really surprised to receive this and certainly honoured and privileged. But to me, it actually recognizes the work of many, many people that I have worked with for quality improvement care in the health region, and I am very privileged to receive it,” he said.
“Really what happened is everyone knows how to do this job, everyone knows what job they are assigned and as soon as they got a job, they addressed their job with skill and relish so that it was actually very easy to oversee that.”
Cload said during the tragedy, the message he was giving to the staff was, “It doesn’t matter what comes in the door, we are trained for this, we are going to be good at this and we are going to look after this.”
According to the news release, Cload has also contributed to a variety of emergency department flow initiatives that included overcapacity protocols, transition plans for trauma patients to inpatient units, and building a rapid access outpatient psychiatry program.









