Message from the Program Director
Mitch Sokolosky, M.D., FACEP
The Department of Emergency Medicine at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine is fully committed to its residency training program. We are very proud of our heritage as being the oldest Emergency Medicine residency in the southeast and one of the founding programs in the country. We have graduates practicing in all areas of Emergency Medicine both nationally and internationally. Our alumni are chairs of departments, residency directors, presidents of groups, and front line practicing emergency physicians. Even though we are an established program, by no means are we complacent. We strive to stay on the cutting edge of clinical Emergency Medicine, education, and research.
Our university and community training sites offer a combined emergency department census in excess of 180,000 patient visits per year and is growing. The primary training site, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (WFUBMC), is the tertiary care center for northwest North Carolina and southern Virginia and the teaching hospital for the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. The medical center, which consistently ranks among the nations best, is a Level I Trauma Center nestled in a residential community in one of the south's most livable cities, Winston-Salem, NC. Forsyth Medical Center, located only 2 miles from WFUBMC, offers our residents the opportunity to train in a busy community hospital similar to what most residency graduates practice in. Our graded clinical responsibility offers our residents a supportive nurturing environment to learn emergency medicine to the fullest. Our didactic education program is very strong. We offer scheduled conference time each week and our faculty cover the E.D. so all residents may attend.
However, the people at Wake Forest are what truly sets our residency apart from the others. Our faculty are outstanding teachers, clinicians, researchers, and citizens. Our residency moto is "character, competence, and compassion" and we strive to recruit only faculty and residents with these personal attributes.
Our program is always under constant scrutiny by our residents and faculty on how we can do better. The residents are actively involved in decisions that affect the training program. The combination of an excellent clinical environment and strong academic endeavors make our training program one of the best in the country. Come visit us, I know that you will be impressed with what Wake Forest has to offer.