A Boston physician who managed triage efforts after the Boston marathon bombings was awarded the AMA Medal of Valor Saturday during the opening session of the 2014 AMA Interim Meeting in Dallas. The award is made to an AMA member or members who demonstrate courage under extraordinary circumstances in non-wartime situations.
Andrew S. Ulrich, MD, executive vice chairman of the department of emergency medicine at the Boston Medical Center, directed and coordinated the immediate care and resuscitative efforts for 28 patients, who ranged in age from 5 to 78 years old. Dr. Ulrich swiftly assessed the needs of each victim and identified eight patients with life-threating injuries, arranging the operations they required within 40 minutes of their arrival.
Also at the Interim Meeting, the AMA presented Peter N. Bretan, Jr., MD, with the Benjamin Rush Award for Citizenship and Community Service. The award recognizes physicians who have gone above and beyond their professional call of duty to make an outstanding public service contribution.
Dr. Bretan, a California urologist and transplant surgeon, was chosen by the AMA for his exceptional work as an innovator in renal transplant surgery and urology, in addition to his unwavering disaster relief efforts around the globe to help save lives. He is the founder of Life Plant International, a charitable organization that promotes disaster preparedness, organ donation and early disease screening worldwide.
The AMA also presented four Medical Executive Lifetime Achievement Awards at the meeting. Recipients are:
- Nancy J. Adams, executive director of the Monroe County Medical Society and New York Chapter 1 of the American Academy of Pediatrics
- Thomas M. Donoghue, former senior vice president of communications and marketing for the Medical Society of the State of New York
- Scott Hunt, former CEO of the Endocrine Society
- James H. Scully, Jr., M.D., former medical director and CEO of the American Psychiatric Association
The Medical Executive Lifetime Achievement Award honors a medical executive of a county medical society, state medical association or national medical specialty society who has contributed substantially to the goals and ideals of the medical profession.
