Dr. Thom R. Mitchell, MD, FACEP trained at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). The EDs of Vanderbilt University Medical Center and its partner facility Metropolitan Nashville General Hospital (MNGH) were run principally by the nurses. The Medical and Surgical house staff provided patient management, consulting senior house staff as needed. Obstetric patients were transported to labor and delivery, and pediatric house staff were called down for children. During his Chief Residency year, the CEO of MNGH offered Dr. Mitchell the ED supervising attending physician role. MNGH managed most of the penetrating and blunt trauma in the Nashville community, seeing 40,000 visits per year. During his five-year tenure, Dr. Mitchell hired additional attending physicians, including a general surgeon, who taught Dr. Mitchell ED surgical patient management. Dr. Mitchell became an ATLS instructor and developed a 30-day Emergency Medicine course for the house staff and students assigned to MNGH ED. He became the Acting Medical Director for the facility. Simultaneously, VUMC instituted an Emergency Medicine division and became a level one trauma center.
Subsequently, Dr. Mitchell moved to a busy HCA community hospital ED for a year. In 1994, he began a 28-year tenure as a staff ED physician at a single coverage critical access hospital outside of Nashville. He was the ED Director there for seventeen of those years.
Dr. Mitchell became a member of ACEP and the Tennessee Chapter in 1990, joining the state Board in 2002 and serving as Tennessee Chapter President 2012-1014. Currently, he is the Chapter secretary-treasurer. Dr. Mitchell became an ACEP fellow in 2007. He attended his first ACEP Council meeting in 2009 and hasn't missed one since. He served on four Reference Committees and is impressed with how resolutions are reflective of the everyday issues confronted in the ED, addressed with the Council’s deliberative and decisive temperament.
About This Award
The Council Meritorious Service Award is presented to a member of the College who has served as a councilor for at least three years and who, in that capacity, has made consistent contributions to the growth and maturation of the ACEP Council. The ACEP Council is the forum in which chapter and section of membership representatives both elect and provide guidance to the Board of Directors.
