Since 2005, Dr. David Townes has played a critical role at Remote Medical International as Chief Medical Advisor. It is my pleasure to announce that this week he accepted the position of Medical Director for the company.
The Medical Director position is a difficult job that requires a unique set of skills. With dozens of physicians, nurses, and paramedics working around the world, Dr. Townes provides ultimate over-site for quality control, protocol development, and improvement, as well as providing on-going education in concert with the Director of the Medical Support Group.
In the Training Group, Dr. Townes leads the Advisory Board that steers the content of our courses, how we teach, and the standards by which we determine competence in our students.
So our challenge in hiring a Medical Director was not a small one. The position required that one be a leading authority in wilderness medicine, published in remote-area care, possess a long, respected teaching record, have experience working with paramedics and mid-level providers, and have experience providing care in austere settings and developing countries. Beyond those requirements, our additional “would like†list included a formal education in tropical medicine, since numerous projects operated in areas affected by these types of diseases, especially malaria.
A lot of people laughed when I talked about the ideal candidate for this position, yet I believe that to be unrivaled in the industry, we must continue recruiting unrivaled individuals in the industry. This is the case with many of our staff and I am privileged to work with the caliber of people that I do.
In 2005, Dr. Townes began his career at Remote Medical International as an advisor to a project with the National Science Foundation. At that time, the Medical Support Group was just getting started and I deployed on that project for three months in the Arctic with Dr. Townes as my topside support. In 2008, he left Seattle and his jobs as an ER Physician at UW – Madigan Army Medical Center and Associate Residency Program Director to pursue his diploma in Tropical Medicine from the London School and research malaria in Africa.
Prior to starting at RMI, Dr. Townes attended University of Illinois at Chicago earning a Master’s Degree in Public Health. His experience includes working as a Clinical Instructor and Attending Physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess, Staff Physician to the Yosemite Search and Rescue Team (YOSAR), Medical Director to the Subaru Primal Quest, and Expedition Physician in Antarctica. And the list goes on.
Over the past five years, Dr. Townes’s work in Malaria and Tropical Disease research has taken him to posts in Haiti, Ghana, Ethiopia, Senegal, Malawi, Indonesia, and Zambia. In between, he has taught with the ExpedMed Kilimanjaro Altitude Course and spoken at numerous expedition and wilderness medicine conferences. As an educator, he received the F.M. Burke Award: Teacher of the Year several years in a row for his work with the Physician Assistant Program at University of Washington’s MedEx program.
You will find his most recent book Expedition and Wilderness Medicine by
Cambridge University Press, 2009. at the Remote Medicine for the Advanced Provider Course. You will also run across his work in a variety of publications, including the CDC’s MMWR, The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Journal of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, The Iraqi Medical Journal, The Journal of Emergency Medicine, and Emergency Medicine.
We are all excited to have Dr. Townes back in a more involved role here. You will find him popping into the Wilderness EMT Course as well as the RMAP Courses for ALS Providers. Clients can also expect Dr. Townes’s involvement in project planning and execution, continued research in tropical medicine, and stronger collaboration in disaster response and health initiatives with those operating abroad.
Welcome back to the Team DT.
