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Medical Center employees lauded on state, national levels

Published on Monday, May 22, 2023

Medical Center faculty and staff often are recognized regionally, nationally and internationally for their academic or medical achievements. These accolades place UMMC among health science centers worldwide.

Medical Center trauma, AirCare teams recognized for excellence in emergency response

Those accepting the Circle of Excellence award include, from left, Dr. Matthew Kutcher, a trauma surgeon and assistant professor of surgery; trauma management registered nurse educator Kendall Wilcher; AirCare critical care paramedic Ben White; Mississippi Center for Emergency Services critical care transport educator Will Appleby; AirCare flight registered nurses Shyann King and Kevin King; and Dr. Chinenye Iwuchukwu, a trauma surgeon and assistant professor of surgery.
Those accepting the Circle of Excellence award include, from left, Dr. Matthew Kutcher, a trauma surgeon and assistant professor of surgery; trauma management registered nurse educator Kendall Wilcher; AirCare critical care paramedic Ben White; Mississippi Center for Emergency Services critical care transport educator Will Appleby; AirCare flight registered nurses Shyann King and Kevin King; and Dr. Chinenye Iwuchukwu, a trauma surgeon and assistant professor of surgery.

Members of the Medical Center’s trauma and AirCare medical helicopter transport teams have been recognized with the Mississippi Trauma Symposium Circle of Excellence Award.

They received the honor during the May 1-4 “Navigating Disparities in Trauma Care” symposium sponsored by the Mississippi Trauma Care Foundation.

Winston Medical Center in Louisville, LifeCare EMS ambulance service and PHI Air Medical also shared in the award.

UMMC’s trauma team members regularly respond statewide and treat patients from mass casualty incidents. In February, the team partnered with a number of emergency medical responders to respond to an incident in Winston County that resulted in multiple patients with life-threatening injuries.

Before arriving to give initial care to the patients, local responders placed a call to Mississippi MED-COM, the state’s emergency communications network housed at UMMC’s Mississippi Center for Emergency Services (MCES). They requested that AirCare, the state’s most sophisticated medical helicopter transport, be placed on standby, and after arriving at the scene, followed up with a request for two aircraft.

LifeCare EMS took all the patients to Winston Medical Center, where they were initially triaged and treated by emergency room staff and crew members from AirCare and LifeCare EMS. They were flown in two AirCare helicopters and by PHI to UMMC, with MED-COM alerting the trauma team that the patients were on their way.

“Mississippi MED-COM continued to help manage communications with LifeCare and Winston Medical Center to ensure all patients were appropriately transferred and transported,” said Will Appleby, MCES critical care transport educator. “This award highlights the trauma system working to ensure trauma patients are appropriately treated, transported and managed definitively by all agencies and hospitals at every stop along the way through the system.

“There were no delays in care, and patients were taken to the appropriate definitive trauma center the first time.”

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Emergency Medicine leader named to national advisory council

Portrait of Dr. Kendall McKenzie
McKenzie

Dr. Kendall McKenzie, professor and chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, has been tapped for service on a U.S. Department of Transportation advisory panel.

McKenzie will serve a two-year term as the emergency physicians sector representative on the DOT’s National Emergency Medical Services Advisory Council (NEMSAC). It was established in April 2007 as a nationally recognized council of EMS representatives and consumers to provide advice and make consensus-driven recommendations regarding EMS to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), part of the Department of Transportation, and to the members of the Federal Interagency Committee on EMS (FICEMS).

McKenzie received a letter signed by DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg that said McKenzie’s “experience and leadership will add valuable insights and perspective that continue to help further NEMSAC’s missions.”

A veteran military battlefield surgeon, McKenzie leads a department with two dozen faculty members, a fully accredited residency program and a division of medical toxicology. Emergency Medicine also has an active research program and is heavily involved in education programs for medical students and residents as well as nursing, dental and allied health students.

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Three SHRP faculty lauded by radiologic journal review board

Portrait of Dr. Asher Street
Street
Portrait of Dr. Lee Brown
Brown
Portrait of Kristi Moore
Moore

Three faculty members at the School of Health Related Professions have been honored for their research article on workplace violence in health care.

Dr. Asher Street and Dr. Lee Brown, both associate professors of radiologic sciences; and Dr. Kristi Moore, chair of radiologic sciences received the 2022 Radiologic Technology Distinguished Author Award in Honor of Jean I. Widger. Their article, “Workplace Violence in Imaging Departments,” was featured in the November/December issue of the journal Radiologic Technology.

The award is given by the Editorial Review board of the American Society of Radiologic Technologists to authors of a peer-reviewed article deemed the most outstanding manuscript of the calendar year. The honor carries a $1,000 cash award, which the authors will donate to the Radiologic Sciences Development Fund.

Street, Brown and Moore were assisted by Dr. Shamsi Berry, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Western Michigan University and the Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine in Kalamazoo.

Also contributing were Hannah Stovall, Mekayla Rainey, Callie Shepherd, Courtney Turner and Angel Flagg, all graduates of the MRI master’s program at SHRP.