Alan E. Jones, MD – Site investigator and co-founder, EMSHOCKNET.
Delivery of excellent emergency medical care is our highest priority and the motivation for all of the other activities that we undertake. Carolinas Medical Center serves Mecklenburg County and 16 surrounding counties in North and South Carolina. It is the flagship of a network that includes acute care facilities, subacute facilities, and clinics in North and South Carolina. The Emergency Department at Carolinas Medical Center manages over 114,000 patients each year or about 300-320 patients per day.
The Medical Center has been designated as the Level 1 regional trauma center and is the referral hospital for the Carolinas Heart Emergency Network. The emergency department features an unusually diverse mix of patient care opportunities including 30% medical, 27% surgical / traumatic, 25% pediatric, 15% obstetrical-gynecological, and 3% psychiatric and toxicological illness. Two to five board certified emergency medicine faculty are present in the open areas 24 hours a day. Within the department is an eight-bed 24 hour observation unit.
The Department of Emergency Medicine at Carolinas Medical Center supports active programs in clinical research. Members of the research division faculty are grant funded by the National Institutes of Health and private foundations and they facilitate intra-departmental, inter-departmental and multi-center studies on a wide range of topics including septic and undifferentiated shock, ischemic heart disease, and pulmonary embolism. Improving rapid diagnostic modalities is an additional focus of the research in Emergency Medicine at CMC. Emergency medicine faculty participates as members of the Institutional Review Board, and the institutional Research Review Committee and act as mentors for resident research endeavors. The Department of Emergency Medicine accepts one candidate per year into its research fellowship.