ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

Med School: Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany and University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado
Residency:  University of Colorado Health Sciences Center,  Denver, Colorado.
Specialties: Board Certified in Pediatrics and Pediatric Emergency Medicine

Interests: My hobbies outside of Medicine include hiking, biking, skiing, wood-working and cooking. My love for music shows itself in many ways: ballroom dancing (I was a Latin American show dancer), and I play classical piano and some other instruments. I love foreign countries and speak many foreign languages as is typical in Europe and am a history buff.

My experiences in medicine have been broad and diverse, much as my personal life outside of medicine has been. In 1987, I started working for Children’s Hospital in Denver within the Regional Health Care Network. In this role, I was the senior MD in the US entrusted with the task of establishing pediatric emergency departments in community hospitals and stayed in this role through 2000. In 2001 I started the first Pediatric Emergency Department within the State of Indiana before I moved to Chattanooga, TN, to work at Erlanger Campus (part of the University of Tennessee) helping develop its brand new Pediatric Emergency Department. We were part of a level I trauma center for Adult and Pediatric Emergency Medicine, one of the four in the state of Tennessee. I have held various administrative positions being medical director for pediatric emergency departments and pediatric departments at various hospitals throughout my career and actively shaping pediatric emergency medicine also within Copec (in Tennessee).

In July 2007 I moved to my dream state of New Mexico. I had fallen in love with the Southwest and in particular New Mexico when I traveled through the state with my dance partner 33 years ago in 1978 in an old beat up 1972 Kingswood Station Wagon.

I am an academic clinician versus a clinical academician. My clinical work is holy to me and has to this date given me the greatest of satisfaction. However, the research I have been involved in and publishing my case reports is giving me fulfillments never known before! My special medical interests include starting or growing pediatric programs to improve and standardize pediatric care for any community to tertiary care level; pre-hospital care is both a hobby and a special interest of mine. Part of my training involved flying with Flight for Life, the oldest air ambulance system in the US. I also participated in their training and training of Life Force a large air medical transport carrier serving four states of the Southeast including Tennessee. To me the best job I’ve ever had the one that did not pay in money, was as the physician on skis with Copper Mountain Ski Patrol for whom I worked for many years outside my regular medical directorship and clinical activities. I have volunteered my time to Lifeguard here, reviewing pediatric emergencies and helping with protocols and education. With Lifeguard I have already participated in many community teaching/outreach events.
I am an active advocate for children’s and women’s rights, linked to my training at the Henry Kempe Center for child abuse and neglect in Denver, Colorado. Asthma education, its regularly updated NIH guidelines for evaluation and treatment thereof, empowerment of the families in each community that I have worked at, became a special interest of mine, I think because of my family history and my elective training at National Jewish Hospital in Denver, Colorado. I am the liaison between the American Academy of Pediatrics Historical Section of Neonatology and the German equivalent. In this I was actively involved in finding German Jewish Pediatricians in the US that had to flee Germany during WW II to avoid execution.

I was born in Frankfurt, Germany and am of German and French descent. My great-great- grandfather was a vintner from Alsace and owned an orchard in Lorraine! My great-great grandmother and father served under the Princess of Hessen, related to the royal family of Russia and, of course, Great Britain: he, in charge of the horses as the literal ‘marshal’, she in charge of the linens and silver!
My hobbies outside of Medicine include hiking, biking, motorcycling, skiing, wood-working and cooking. My love for music shows itself in many ways: ballroom dancing (I was a Latin American show dancer), and I play classical piano and some other instruments. I love foreign countries and speak many foreign languages as is typical in Europe and am a history buff. I have two children, a 22 year old daughter, studying Mathematics in Chattanooga, TN and volunteering with the Marine Corps as she is wants to become a fighter pilot for the Marine Corps and a 20 year old son, who studies History at Northern Arizona University and is a bicycle racer.

2011