The Miller School of Medicine gained a second highly placed alum within the Florida Department of Health when Patricia Byers, M.D. ’80, was recently named state trauma medical director. The announcement was made last year by Department of Health Secretary Ana M. Viamonte Ros, B.S. ’79, M.D. ’83, M.P.H., who also serves as the state’s first surgeon general.

“We have proven as a state that trauma centers and systems save lives,” Byers says. “The goal is to complete the trauma system in Florida and extend it so all citizens are covered in trauma care.”

Byers works with Florida’s 21 trauma centers on matters such as delivery of patients to the nearest trauma center, as well as integrated rescue and prehospital care.

“My first goal is to get Florida’s trauma registry up to what it should be, so that we can monitor quality more effectively,” says Byers, who remains a professor of surgery and clinical educator at the Miller School’s DeWitt Daughtry Family Department of Surgery in the Division of Trauma, Critical Care and Burns.

The trauma registry keeps tabs on things such as the types of injuries and outcomes recorded within the state’s trauma center network. Byers is also working hard to address shortages of certain types of trauma physicians, especially neurosurgeons, who she says increasingly “don’t want to do trauma. Not only do they have to stay up late at night, but they’re wary of malpractice suits.”

Byers is also pushing to have telemedicine play an active role within the state’s trauma network and is working to create a system that would allow trauma physicians across Florida to swiftly disseminate the latest developments affecting their field.

Still, a major part of her work will focus on prevention efforts. “The most economical way to treat trauma injuries is to prevent them in the first place,” says Byers, who chairs the Florida Committee on Trauma, which is affiliated with the American College of Surgeons.

Viamonte Ros says Byers should be able to “combine her medical skills and extensive knowledge of trauma to provide technical support and consultation to the trauma program statewide.”

Florida’s trauma system is the backbone of the state’s response to mass casualty incidents, such as terrorist attacks, hurricanes, and other disasters.

After earning her M.D. degree from UM in 1980, Byers completed her internship, residency, and chief residency in general surgery at Jackson Memorial Hospital.