News

PITTSBURGH – Emergency medicine physician Arvind Venkat, MD, has been named Vice Chair for Research and Faculty Academic Affairs in the Department of Emergency Medicine of West Penn Allegheny Health System (WPAHS).   In his new capacity at WPAHS, Dr. Venkat will oversee and lead the advancement and coordination of emergency medicine research for WPAHS.

“Dr. Venkat’s impressive scientific and academic credentials, together with his outstanding clinical work in the Allegheny General Hospital (AGH) emergency department, makes him uniquely qualified for this important new position,” said Thomas Campbell, MD, Chair of Emergency Medicine for WPAHS. “His research and academic work has been widely lauded in our field, exploring, among other things, the evolution of emergency medicine and the challenges emergency clinicians face in preparing for a changing future.”

Dr. Venkat, of Wexford, edited the book “Challenging and Emerging Conditions in Emergency Medicine,” published in 2011 by John Wiley and Sons. A reviewer in the Journal of the American Medical Association called the book “timely, highly relevant and well-written…should have a place on every emergency medicine physician’s reading list.” The book addresses the challenges faced by emergency physicians as the emergency department increasingly serves as America’s gateway to medical care for a wide variety of patients, including the very old, those with HIV and those suffering from kidney failure.

Dr. Venkat is currently serving as the site leader or collaborator at AGH of nine privately funded or National Institutes of Health sponsored studies, including ProCESS (Protocolized Care in Early Septic Shock), which looks at alternative strategies for treating sepsis and septic shock, conditions that now have mortality rates as high as 50 percent. 

Dr. Venkat is also chair of the Ethics Committee and co-chair of the Organ Donation Advisory Council at AGH, and co-chair of the Ethics Integration Committee for WPAHS.

A graduate of Harvard University, where he received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in the history of science, Dr. Venkat received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Yale University School of Medicine. He completed a residency in emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

Dr. Venkat is a diplomate of the American Board of Emergency Medicine and a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians.