Please put this mug shot into the system. Pictured is pediatric surgeon Dr. Michael Carr. This will accompany a brief in tomorrow’s paper. More Info
Award: Lifetime Achievement Award honors health care leaders who have left a legacy on the quality and delivery of health care.Winner: Dr. Michael CarrAccomplishments: A pediatric surgeon, Carr helped upgrade ambulance services and through his career served as pioneering surgeon, educator and advocate for emergency responders.
There were no statewide requirements for Tennessee ambulances regarding what life-saving equipment they had to carry back in the 1980s. And Dr. Michael Carr remembers that very few ambulances had equipment that was the right size to save the life of a child or newborn.
At the time, a great portion of his work focused on was happily fulfilled by his work as a pediatric surgeon focused on helping babies with birth defects. But he was curious about the rapidly evolving field of traumatology introduced to Americans mostly by doctors who had served in the Vietnam War. They were applying techniques used on soldiers wounded in battle on civilians who suffered trauma-wounds and injuries inflicted by violence or some external force.
Carr arrived in Chattanooga in 1986 and joined University Surgical Associates as the first pediatric surgeon and first fellowship-trained trauma surgeon in Chattanooga. He knew there was an urgent need for emergency rooms and ambulances to understand how to treat children and newborns who were victims of trauma.
“Back then, there was no statewide guidelines for Tennessee ambulance services regarding what emergency equipment they needed to carry and virtually none of the ambulance services carried life-saving equipment properly sized for a child or newborn,” Carr said. “There were no statewide standardized requirements for what equipment hospital emergency rooms needed to have on hand. And what they did have was usually designed for adult patients.”