How many times have you or a loved one been to the emergency room? Did you ever wonder how the emergency room procedures were established that you have observed in the hit dramas, The Pitt or ER? (The Pitt – Wikipedia ER (TV series) – Wikipedia) How do they make the quick decisions that save lives? Their scripts are based on authentic emergency room procedures established by the medical profession.

In the early 1980s a group of emergency medicine professionals at the University of Cincinnati provided this growing medical specialty with the seminal textbook Emergency Medicine concepts and clinical practice, published by The C.V. Mosby Company. Led by Senior Editor Peter Rosen, M.D., and Associate Editors Drs. Frank J. Baker, G. Richard Braen, Robert H. Dailey, and Richard C. Levy, they assembled a team of eighty-seven emergency medicine experts.

In December 1983, Dr. Richard O. Cummins wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association,

“…senior editor Peter Rosen and his associates have published an excellent textbook that confirms the growing maturity and self-confidence of emergency medicine as a specialty and shows that it is indeed a field that encompasses special knowledge. In this book, the issue is not whether the theories or concepts of emergency medicine are unique the basic science of emergency medicine is the basic science of the other specialties. For Rosen et al, it is the practice of emergency medicine that is unique. Its practitioners must deal with a case mix from the most mundane to the most urgent. Patients with divergent problems compete for limited time and force rapid decisions. Decision making is based on quickly obtained data that have a high level of uncertainty.”

Richard O. Cummins, MD University of Washington Seattle. (JAMA, Dec. 16, 1983, Vol. 250, No. 23, Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice | JAMA | JAMA Network

Associate editor, Dr. Richard C. Levy honored The Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions with the donation of this vital work.

Richard C. Levy, M.D. was the first Chief and then Chairman of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Emergency Medicine Department. With over fifty publications, Dr. Levy served as the President of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) and the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine (AACEM). He contributes to the UC College of Medicine as an Emergency Medicine faculty member and holds Emeritus status. Over the past forty years, Dr. Levy has interviewed the majority of residency program applicants. He continues to advise and financially support the Department of Emergency Medicine. 

Dr. Gregory J. Fermann is the Richard C. Levy Endowed Chair and Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Dr. Fermann has been a faculty member since 1997. He serves the field of Emergency Medicine through mentorship, education, research and working with the nascent emergency medicine physicians in Cincinnati and the nation.

The Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions is grateful to Dr. Levy for his generous gift, and to Dr. Gregory Fermann, Peggy Evans, and Haley Escheman of the Department of Emergency Medicine for expediting the donation to the University of Cincinnati.