Pitt's Critical Care Medicine Experts Honor A Founder Of The Field

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 23 Sep 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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In celebration of his groundbreaking efforts that helped launch a new medical discipline, the Department of Critical Care Medicine (CCM) hosted a reception for Distinguished Service Professor Ake Grenvik, M.D., Ph.D., who has retired after a 40-year career at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The event included presentation of the Ake and Inger Grenvik Chair of Critical Care Medicine and Education to Paul L. Rogers, M.D., CCM professor and program director of the Multidisciplinary Critical Care Training Program.

"Dr. Grenvik co-founded and directed Pitt's CCM training program - the first of its kind in the country - for 25 years," said Michael R. Pinsky, M.D., department vice chair for academic affairs and professor of CCM, bioengineering, cardiovascular disease and anesthesiology. "At one time, half of the world's intensive care physicians were alumni of this program, which remains the largest in the world. To date, nearly 700 specialists have trained here."

When Peter Safar, M.D., who died in 2003, joined the Pitt faculty in 1968 to be the chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, he brought Dr. Grenvik with him. They developed the idea of teaching anesthesiologists, surgeons and internists to further specialize as intensivists to care for the most critically ill patients.

Critical care medicine was recognized as a specialty in 1986, and Pitt established the first academic department to focus on the field in 2002. Dr. Grenvik co-authored the first textbook on the field and served as one of four editors through its first four editions, published more than 350 scientific papers and book chapters and edited 25 books. He is a founding member, past president and winner, in 2000, of a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Critical Care Medicine, which this year established the Ake Grenvik Plenary Lecture as a regular feature of its annual meeting. He also is a founding council member and past member of the World Federation of Societies of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine.

Dr. Grenvik was born in Sunne, Sweden in 1929. He received his medical degree in 1956 from Stockholm's Karolinska Institute and his doctoral degree in physiology in 1966 from the University of Uppsala. He has been a tenured professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the School of Medicine since 1974 and a Distinguished Service Professor of critical care medicine since 1995. For 10 years, he held a faculty position at the Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation, Education and Research (WISER), UPMC's simulation center for training of all categories of health care students and professionals.

Source
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

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