Milestones and Mavericks

We would like to share your recent (past year) professional accomplishment on our updated website. Please send your pediatric emergency medicine news with a brief description to our Staff Liaison.

The Pediatric Section was awarded a section grant! The grant is to develop a generalizable low-technology simulation-based resource to improve the readiness of community emergency departments to triage, stabilize and transfer critically ill children. The PI for the grant is Dr. Marc Auerbach.

Ward P. Myers, MD, MPH, was recently named Program Director for the Emergency Medicine Training Program at United Family Hospital in Shanghai, China.

Maneesha Agarwal, MD, was awarded funding in September from the CDC to study pediatric poisoning. The project is titled "Characterizing the Containers involved in Unsupervised Solid Medication Exposures in Young Children."

The pediatric emergency medicine section would like to express its heart-felt congratulations to Nathan Kupperman, MD, FACEP, and Marianne Gausche-Hill, MD, FACEP, for their tremendous accomplishments in pediatric emergency medicine. Dr. Kupperman is the recipient of the Jim Seidel award for outstanding contributions to the field of pediatric emergency medicine. Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill is the recipient of the Steve Miller award for excellence in education and mentorship.

Coburn Allen, MD, along with associate director, Sujit Iyer, MD, are developing a new pediatric emergency medicine fellowship. Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas and UT Southwestern at Austin have approved/funded a new program scheduled to train 4 fellows/year beginning in July 2014. Dr. Allen was at Baylor College of Medicine previously and assumed this director position in January of this year. This new program he is starting will be under the umbrella of their existing pediatric residency and will be affiliated with the new emergency medicine residency in Austin (beginning 2012). He anticipates having both a 3 year (1 year research) curriculum for pediatric residency trained candidates and a 2-year program for emergency medicine residency trained candidates. In anticipation of their new fellowship program, they will be hosting the PEM Fellows Conference in March 2013.

Dominic Lucia, MD, has assumed the reigns of leadership as the medical director of the pediatric emergency department at Scott and White's new children's hospital. The opening day for the new ED and program was October 4th. It is the newest pediatric hospital in the state and the only stand-alone facility between Dallas and Austin. The hospital is expected to provide access to convenient, world-class pediatric care to families in 32 counties, who previously had to travel far from home to receive treatment. The new Children’s Hospital is a 64-bed inpatient facility including 48 private rooms and 16 Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) rooms, as well as a 14 room Pediatric Emergency Department that is open 24 hours a day. Dr. Lucia states that he's actively recruiting for PEM physicians.