Emergency Medicine - Chattanooga

Welcome to the Emergency Medicine Residency at the UT Health Sciences College of Medicine – Chattanooga

Our residents train within the Erlanger Health System, anchored by Erlanger Baroness Hospital in downtown Chattanooga, the only Level I trauma center within a 120-mile radius. Baroness sees more than 90,000 adult and pediatric patients each year, and ours is the only emergency medicine residency in the institution. The result is a training environment with abundant pathology and procedural volume, where residents manage undifferentiated, high-acuity patients from day one.

Erlanger operates six hospitals and a freestanding emergency department across Tennessee and western North Carolina, serving a region of roughly 50,000 square miles that touches four states. It is the region's only academic medical center and home to a comprehensive stroke center that ranks among the largest in the country, along with Children's Hospital at Erlanger, the only hospital in the region devoted solely to the care of children. Our program was the first emergency medicine residency in the University of Tennessee system, and it remains the referral destination for the sickest patients across that entire region.

Two aspects of our program deserve particular mention:

The first is the training itself. Our curriculum is structured by postgraduate year, with competency-based goals and objectives that make expectations explicit at every stage. Weekly conference is protected time, taught largely by our own faculty, and paired with a monthly structured journal club in which residents present and appraise the literature with faculty guidance. Our research curriculum spans study design, biostatistics, research conduct, and knowledge translation, supported by biostatistical consultation through the University of Tennessee, and culminates in an annual departmental Research Day each spring. We are equally deliberate about feedback. Residents receive direct, frequent feedback on shift, have full access to their evaluations, and have a genuine voice in how the program is run.

The second is our faculty. We are a diverse group with a broad range of clinical and academic interests, and that range shows up in what we offer. We direct an Advanced Emergency Medicine Ultrasonography fellowship and an ACGME-accredited Emergency Medical Services fellowship, along with a dedicated ultrasound clerkship for medical students and an active hyperbaric medicine and wound care center. Our department provides EMS medical direction for a 14-county region, and our faculty hold leadership roles throughout the hospital while remaining active in shaping the future of the specialty at the regional and national level.

Finally, there is Chattanooga. The city sits on the Tennessee River at the foot of the southern Appalachians, with climbing, paddling, and trail access minutes from the hospital, a cost of living that lets residents live well on a resident salary, and a downtown that has quietly become one of the more livable in the Southeast.

We are proud of this program and the direction it is heading. We invite you to learn more about our residency, and we look forward to meeting you!