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Weekly JEMS.com author Keith Wesley, MD FACEP, has been named the Minnesota EMS medical director. He was chosen for the post by the Minnesota Emergency Medical Services Regulatory Board (EMSRB or Board).
I m honored to have been selected. Having provided similar duties for Wisconsin the past two years I am looking forward to the challenge, Wesley said.
Wesley, who also serves on the JEMS editorial board and will speak at the 2008 EMS Today Conference & Exposition, practices emergency medicine at St. John s and Woodwinds hospitals in St. Paul, according to an EMSRB statement. He received his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in 1986 and completed his emergency medicine residency at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. In addition to his new part-time role as Minnesota s EMS medical director, he serves as the part-time medical director of the Wisconsin Bureau of EMS and as the chair of the Medical Directors Council of the National Association of State EMS Officials, the statement continued.
Dr. Wesley will serve as a resource to medical directors of ambulance services throughout the state. This will be particularly important for our small, rural ambulance services, as physicians are already in short supply and stretched thin in rural areas, Dr. Mari Thomas, a member of the Board s selection committee and the medical director for Sauk Centre Ambulance, said in the statement. Dr. Thomas added that the committee was impressed with Wesley s enthusiasm and willingness to visit rural medical directors.
Minnesota and Wisconsin share many of the challenges facing EMS today and both states will benefit from cooperative efforts to address them, Wesley said. EMS in Minnesota is well regulated and organized. Having practiced medicine there for the past five years has allowed me to gain a greater understanding of their goals.
Wesley begins his duties as Minnesota s EMS Medical Director on Dec. 17 and is expected to be working from the state agency s office in Minneapolis one to two days per week, when he is not traveling throughout the state.
