Emory Report

June 14, 1999

Volume 51, No. 33

Kellerman named chair of med school's newest department Formerly a division within the medical school's Department of Surgery, Emergency Medicine has been granted departmental status. Arthur Kellermann, acting chief of the division since 1995, is the new department's chairman. "Emergency Medicine at Emory has grown to be one of the nation's top academic programs," said School of Medicine Dean Thomas Lawley. "We have an outstanding faculty-- departmental status will permit them to build on their accomplishments and help the School of Medicine achieve its goals for teaching, research and community service." Emergency medicine's 39 faculty members support one of the nation's oldest and largest training programs in the specialty. Emory's fully accredited program trains 48 residents (16 a year for the three-year residency). Many graduates go on to staff hospital emergency departments throughout Georgia. In addition to training their own residents, Emergency Medicine faculty provide 24-hour-a-day supervision to more than 200 residents from other departments of the Emory and Morehouse schools of medicine who rotate through the emergency departments of Grady and Crawford Long hospitals. The department also teaches medical students from both schools as well as students from the School of Nursing, physician assistants and paramedics. Emory emergency physicians hold key leadership roles in the community, including medical direction of Grady's ambulance service, which serves downtown Atlanta, Fulton County 911 and the Georgia Poison Center (in conjunction with the Department of Pediatrics). Faculty research focuses on the areas of injury control, pre-hospital cardiac care, health services research, pain management, technology assessment and medical toxicology. Despite a heavy clinical and teaching load, department faculty published 37 papers and 10 book chapters in 1998. As chair of Emergency Medicine, Kellermann will oversee the emergency departments at Emory, Crawford Long and Grady. He also directs the Center for Injury Control at the School of Public Health and is best known for his epidemiologic research on the prevention of firearm-related injuries and deaths. Kellermann, who joined the Emory faculty in 1993 after an eight-year tenure as chief of the Division of Emergency Medicine at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, received the Hal Jayne Academic Excellence Award from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in 1997 and is a member of the board of directors of SAFEKIDS of Georgia and the Georgia Commission on Family Violence. --Lorri Preston Return to June 14, 1999, contents page