Biography
I had great dreams to be an emergency physician as a child. However, living in impoverished areas of East Los Angeles conspired against this idea. After some time, my grandparents took custody of me. My grandfather, a general practitioner in a small California mountain town, became a role model for my future dreams and goals.
My youth gave me the desire to serve the disadvantaged. I initially sought to serve the poor by staying with UNM, and internationally through HOPE worldwide, giving me opportunities to work in an Indian leper colony, giving hope in Mexico City colonias, and training doctors in Cambodia where Pol Pot destroyed the previous physician generation. I have worked with Jamaican and Nepali doctors and patients. I have always tried to understand these amazing cultures by living as they do, and learning their language. I have sought to empower my international colleagues by facilitating them to develop solutions to their challenges in emergency medicine, rather than impose American ways upon them. I seek to have my EM residents do likewise.
As an American born Latino, I have taken interest in the needs of the Latino and immigrant population. I embarked on a program called PACEMD (Pan-American Collaborative Emergency Medicine Development program. Having worked with Haywood Hall MD, PACEMD began as a training program for one EMS service to a cutting-edge community based training program throughout Mexico. Our courses have become a standard throughout the entire country of Mexico and beyond, with a presence from Mexico to Argentina. We have developed highly regarded airway courses, ultrasound and disaster courses, courses in obstetrics, and trauma/resuscitation courses. These courses are disseminated through the Mexican Health Ministry. This year, we will develop a tropical medicine course in Cali, Colombia.
Over the past several years, I have focused on emergency medicine programs in Argentina. With the invaluable friendships and hard work done in that amazing nation, emergency medicine evolved from a non-viable career option for an Argentine physician to an official nationwide specialty this year. To think that I had a hand in this humbles me deeply!
I have also had the opportunity to develop a successful wilderness medicine course for the university. From its humble inception in 2000, it has now had over 300 medical students, residents, and staff physician rotators. The course has become well known nationally and internationally, which has had a significant positive impact on our university. This rotation has since offered successful specialty courses in high altitude and diving medicine, and was the impetus for our disaster medicine rotation. These courses are academically rigorous, yet memorable. The reputation of the courses has enhanced the reputation of our emergency department and the careers of those I have involved.
These accomplishments have motivated me to continue along a path of leadership internationally, while inspiring others to realize their own potential. I will continue to train the next generation of leaders among those I mentor to go farther; the new fellowship I have developed will help do so.
I believe these endeavors have helped my patients, one at a time, whether in the emergency department, on a cliff in the Sandia Mountains, in an altitude clinic in Ecuador, or during an earthquake in Haiti. May these activities inspire other doctors to dream.