Finding a new work life in Sharon Hospital

By CYNTHIA HOCHSWENDER

SHARON — How nice and approachable is Dr. Joseph Catania, the new general surgeon at Sharon Hospital? So nice that, even when confronted with tired old jokes about surgeons being on "the cutting edge," he laughs — not just politely but with warmth.

Catania seems to be the opposite of that stereotype of the forbidding surgeon. He is, in fact, a surgeon with an excellent bedside manner.

Perhaps one reason why Catania, 52, is so relaxed is that he comes to Sharon Hospital on the heels of 17-and-a-half years at the increasingly large and overstressed Danbury Hospital. During an interview last week, he sat comfortably sipping coffee with cream in the hospital cafeteria, looking out over the nearby hills and fields of verdant Sharon.

"This hospital is a gem," he said, not once but several times during the interview.

Even though it’s a much smaller facility than the one he had worked at for nearly two decades, he said that when he arrived at Sharon in December, he found the operating rooms and emergency wing to be in excellent shape and well supplied with all the equipment he needed. But the pace was less chaotic than what he had been experiencing in Danbury.

"It’s a Level 2 Trauma Center now," he said of his former hospital. It wasn’t uncommon, he noted, for patients to have to wait for several hours to get emergency care there, which is perhaps unavoidable but it is certainly not the preferred method of working for most doctors.

Also, the fatigue of having to do emergency room chores in addition to working with his general surgery patients was beginning to wear on Catania.

Here in Sharon, he said happily, he has had a chance to catch his breath a little, get to know the community, and get back to doing what he does best: care for patients.

"I LOVE taking care of patients," he said. "I love fixing things. That’s why I became a surgeon."

As a general surgeon, Catania works on hernias, bowels, gall bladders. It might not sound glamorous when described as such, but these are surgeries that can dramatically increase the quality of life of a patient once they’re treated.

Catania — and the hospital — are clear, too, about what they can and can not do.

"I’m not doing angioplasty or heart surgery here," he said, adding that, "People often ask me, if it were my daughter or my son or my parent, would I have them get this or that surgery done locally or in New York or Boston. For some procedures, yes, you might want to go to a bigger hospital. But for others, you’re better off having it done here, where the care is more personal and where you don’t have the added stress of traveling back and forth."

Catania is joining the hospital’s existing team of surgeons. Kristin Anderson is the chief of surgery, and, like Catania, she is a general surgeon. Peter Reyelt is also part of the team, though he works mainly on "bumps, lumps, skin tumors, leg ulcers," Catania explained. Reyelt also joins the other surgeons in the operating room when an additional pair of experienced hands is needed.

In a perfect world, Catania said, he would like a plastic surgeon to be available to area patients, even if just on a part-time basis.

"Not necessarily for cosmetic work," he said, but for fixing scars or doing breast reconstructions, for example.

Also in a future perfect world, Catania and his wife (who is a minister at the Roxbury Congregational Church) will move to the area.

For now, they remain in Bridgewater, while the youngest of their two sons finishes high school. A native of Connecticut, the surgeon grew up in New Haven, went to medical school at Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and did his residency in New York, working at hospitals in New York City as well as at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y.

For now, Catania said, he is working on making the Sharon Hospital surgery program "the best it can be" and getting to know members of the community. Although most patients don’t speak to their surgeon until just before their procedure, he said that, at least for now, he is available to meet with patients. Call to make an appointment at 860-364-0226.