Posted by: Andrew Lavelle; 18 May 2017; 11:20 am
Dr. Eric S. Weinstein began his prehospital career as a 16-year old volunteer responder with the Rockaway Neck First Aid Squad in Lake Hiawatha, NJ. After a US Air Force sponsored Emergency Medicine Residency at NY Medical College-Metropolitan Hospital in Manhattan, he was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base teaching military and emergency medicine at USUHS (Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences). Upon separating from the USAF his family settled in South Carolina, where he joined the South Carolina-1 DMAT and became the Team Leader until 2002. In 1997, he earned the International Chief Emergency Physician from ITACCS in Mainz Germany and joined WADEM. From 2012-2015 he was the SC-1 US&R Medical Director. In 2016, he earned the European Master in Disaster Medicine from UPO in Novara, Italy with the thesis “Ethical treatment of the mangled extremity in a disaster: just-in-time education is not a curriculum.”
He was part of the team that developed the Model Uniform Core Criteria for Mass Casualty Triage and the SALT Mass Casualty Triage Algorithm. Textbook work includes section editor and chapter author in Ciottone Disaster Medicine, Edition I and II, the Schwartz TEMS textbook, and the Amputation Chapter in the Wolfson Disaster Orthopedics Textbook. Over the last 24 years, he has been active within South Carolina Emergency Departments, hospitals, and local and state committees to advance Disaster Medicine. His community efforts focus on the rural setting with hazards ranging from hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, ice storms, man-made transportation and other disasters. Currently, he is working to adopt the WHO EMT Initiative in the US and plans to bring the assets of WADEM to professionalize Disaster and Humanitarian Response throughout the world. Dr. Weinstein hopes to globally implement WHO Classifications and Minimum Standards for Foreign Medical Teams (now Emergency Medical Teams) in Sudden Onset Disasters.
“WADEM has a unique opportunity through the individual members’ knowledge and influence, as well as the weight of our collective voice to contribute to the science and to advance the professionalism of disaster and humanitarian response.”