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Robert Muelleman, M.D. |
Dr. Muelleman, a 1984 UNMC College of Medicine graduate, has served as chief of the medical center’s section of emergency medicine since 1998.
“Dr. Muelleman is an outstanding emergency medicine physician and has done a superb job as chief of the emergency medicine section,” said John Gollan, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the UNMC College of Medicine. “I’m pleased he will be leading our newest department and anticipate that, under his guidance, it rapidly will become one of the finest in the country.”
Emergency medicine has become so multidisciplinary that it is increasingly being viewed as its own specialty, Dr. Muelleman said. Transforming UNMC’s emergency medicine section into a department has been necessary, he said, because of the growth of emergency services, the establishment of an emergency residency program in the state and because of the advantage being a department provides in attracting the best faculty and residents.
“There’s a certain amount of prestige and respect in being a department,” Dr. Muelleman said. “This will aid in our ability to recruit faculty and students.”
About two-thirds of emergency medicine programs at other academic health science centers are organized into departments, including the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, the University of Missouri and Mayo Medical School. UNMC’s emergency medicine department is fully staffed — for the first time since Dr. Muelleman’s tenure — with 19 physician faculty members, six administrative staff and 18 residents.
As department chair, Dr. Muelleman is focused on increasing the amount of scholarly activity and federal research funds within the department, endowing faculty positions, building such areas of excellence as toxicology, promoting faculty development through presentations at national and international meetings and encouraging greater involvement in specialty societies and professional organizations.
In 2004, UNMC launched its first Emergency Medicine Residency Program, which includes medical rotations in Scottsbluff. There are 18 residents enrolled in the three-year program, which helps increase the number of emergency medicine physicians practicing in rural Nebraska. The residency program — which annually draws approximately 250 applicants — is sought for its rural residency component, Dr. Muelleman said. “They apply, in part, because of the rural rotations,” he said.
In addition to residents, Dr. Muelleman said 50 medical students rotate through the emergency department each year and 50 residents from other departments rotate through for a month.
In addition to UNMC’s annual rural emergency medicine continuing medical education conference, Dr. Muelleman hopes to enhance UNMC’s outreach activities for rural emergency medicine providers using telehealth training and education. “We hope the final leg of our outreach efforts will be to take patient simulators on the road to smaller communities to impact emergency care in the region,” he said.
Dr. Muelleman is grateful to the College of Medicine dean and the medical center for its support of emergency medicine, which prior to Jan. 1, had been assigned to the UNMC Department of Surgery. He also acknowledges the support of Byers ‘Bud’ Shaw Jr., M.D., chairman of the department of surgery. “It’s very clear without that support of these key leaders, we wouldn’t be where we are,” Dr. Muelleman said.
“I’m honored to lead the new emergency medicine department,” Dr. Muelleman said. “I look forward to having a seat at the table and fully participating in decisions for the College of Medicine and hospital. As a department, we’ll be able to support other people’s needs and have more accountability for our contributions to helping the medical center attain its goals and objectives.”
Dr. Muelleman completed his residency at University of Missouri-Kansas City and Truman Medical Center and has been practicing emergency medicine since 1987. He has been board certified in emergency medicine through the American Board of Emergency Medicine since 1988. Dr. Muelleman was a member of the section of emergency medicine faculty at UNMC from 1988 to 1993. Before returning to UNMC in 1998, he served as associate professor and co-director of research in the department of emergency medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo.
Dr. Muelleman’s goals when he returned to UNMC included recruiting academic faculty, starting a residency program and combining the Clarkson and University hospital emergency rooms. “If we were successful with that we’d be able to say we were a department,” he said. “It was my five-year plan that turned into an eight-year plan.”