Mark W. Bowyer, MD, FACS, Chair of the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma’s Surgical Skills Committee, has been named the 2017 recipient of the Robert Danis Prize.
Mark W. Bowyer, MD, FACS, Chair of the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma’s Surgical Skills Committee, has been named the 2017 recipient of the Robert Danis Prize awarded by the International Society of Surgery/Société Internationale de Chirurgie (ISS/SIC). This award is presented to a surgeon who has made important contributions to the fields of trauma, burns, or critical care. Dr. Bowyer was selected for his lifelong commitment and broad contributions to the field of trauma and surgical simulation.
Dr. Bowyer, the Ben Eiseman Professor of Surgery and surgical director of simulation, division of trauma and combat surgery, department of surgery, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS)–Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC), Bethesda, MD, spent more than 22 years as an Air Force trauma and combat surgeon. He has taught trauma skills to thousands of medical students and physicians around the world in the last three decades and is one of the chief architects of the Advanced Surgical Skills for Exposures in Trauma course, which has been presented in more than 100 course sites in 11 countries in the last six years. Dr. Bowyer served as the Air Force’s “trauma czar” while serving Iraq, where he directed and coordinated all care provided to combat trauma patients.
In addition, he is the surgical director of the USUHS Val G. Hemming Simulation Center, where he has been on the forefront of using simulators to teach advanced trauma and acute care surgical skills and where he works to develop and validate augmented and virtual reality, as well as trauma, laparoscopic, acute care surgical, triage, and critical care-based simulators. At present, Dr. Bowyer is working on simulation projects to improve patient safety.
Dr. Bowyer will receive the Danis Prize during the ISS/SIC 2017 World Congress of Surgery, August 13−17 in Basel, Switzerland. (Read more about the World Congress of Surgery at www.wcs2017.org/.) Read more about Dr. Bowyer at bit.ly/2qcpETa.