Katherine L. Heilpern, M.D., refers to the emergency room as a mirror for society's problems. Individuals who are uninsured or underinsured. Overuse of guns. Underuse of seatbelts. Drinking and driving. Drug-resistant staph infections. The problems of chronic illness. A large emergency room in an urban hospital-like Grady Memorial-sees it all. So too the emergency departments of Emory Crawford Long, Emory University Hospital and Emory Johns Creek. All of these are under the direction of the Emory Department of Emergency Medicine.

Having taken a long look into the emergency-room mirror, Heilpern is determined to change the image that reflects back. Driven by her commitment to the Atlanta community and desire to make Emory a global leader in health care, she has become a key figure in improving the reach and influence of the Department of Emergency Medicine.

A graduate of Emory's School of Medicine, Heilpern completed her training at Temple School of Medicine in internal medicine, and received board certification in internal medicine and emergency medicine. She was recruited back to Emory by Dr. Arthur Kellermann in 1996, became Assistant Dean for Medical Education and Student Affairs, and now serves as the Ada Lee and Pete Correll Professor and Chair of Emergency Medicine in the School of Medicine. Heilpern is a recipient of the National Teaching Award from the American College of Emergency Physicians and the Dean's Teaching Award at Emory; a former Woodruff Leadership Academy Fellow; and President-Elect of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. In 2002, she attended the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine program, an elite faculty development program for women that accepts only 45 individuals a year from medical schools and dental schools around the country.

Her initial training in internal medicine continues to influence her work at Emory. Says Heilpern, "When I made the academic and clinical switch to emergency medicine, my passion for infectious disease didn't leave; it was rather more solidified because I realized that there were not very many people in academic emergency medicine who were focusing on infectious diseases." Her recent efforts have included planning for pandemic influenza; Heilpern's goal is to create procedures for dealing with an onslaught of flu patients in a clinical setting already strained at the seams. Working with Dr. Alex Isakov, Director of the Emory Center for Critical Event Preparedness and Response, she humorously calls their project the "Fast Flu Drive Thru" - helping health care workers diagnose and assess the needs of large volumes of patients, and ensuring that patients receive the care they need as quickly and efficiently as possible.

In addition to developing a protocol to deal with epidemics, Heilpern has been a strong supporter of the new simulation lab in the School of Medicine, which will allow medical staff to train in an emergency room setting. The lab is designed to look like a clinical department such as an ER, an OR, an ICU, or a patient room. Lying on a gurney, instead of a human being, is a computerized mannequin. The mannequin is controlled from a computer keyboard and can exhibit medical symptoms based on stressors. It can appear to have a heart attack, for example, and then respond when given medicine through an IV. The lab will allow students and staff to practice diagnosing and caring for a patient-without the danger of harming an actual person. According to Heilpern, "The opportunities are really limitless."

In addition to the pandemic flu planning and the simulation lab, Heilpern has collaborates with the School of Nursing on a federally-funded training grant that allows her to teach the principles of emergency care to master's-level nurse practitioner students. The program prepares them to practice in an emergency department and to assist vulnerable populations in particular. There are seven such programs around the country, and Emory's has become so popular that there is now a waiting list for students interested in participating. Heilpern also has received funding to conduct rapid HIV testing at the Grady Emergency Care Center, where patients can swab their own gums and receive preliminary positive or negative responses in about 20 minutes.

When asked about her vision for the emergency department, Heilpern says that she has incorporated Emory's mission statement into her recruitment of new resident applicants to the program. "The vision statement sets out for me a series of very powerful words, that I think are also hallmark words that identify our department." Words also found in the University's strategic plan-destination, social action, positive transformation, diversity, and ethical engagement-shape Heilpern's vision of an emergency department for the coming decades. Through novel curriculum development, innovative projects, and a strong commitment to both patients and medical staff, she is setting a nationally-recognized standard of excellence for emergency health care - and for ethical leadership in a clinical setting.