By Lee Egerstrom
With two decades of life saving emergency medical work behind him, Dr. Thomas Wyatt has been named chief of Emergency Medicine for Hennepin Healthcare and its large hospital and emergency health and education programs.
Wyatt hails from the Shawnee and Quapaw tribes of Oklahoma. With this latest promotion, Wyatt is a Native American physician leading one of the largest emergency healthcare and training programs in America.
Hennepin Healthcare is a subsidiary unit of Hennepin County. It has Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in downtown Minneapolis housing the state’s largest emergency department and trauma centers serving people throughout the region. It also has primary care clinics for country residents around Minneapolis and western metro suburbs.
Logically, Hennepin Healthcare and HCMC are closely linked with the University of Minnesota Medical School and both its facilities and staff are linked with the university for medical education and residency programs.
Wyatt is himself one of those links. He serves as an associate professor of Emergency Medicine at the university’s Medical School and has mentored residents from that school and other medical education programs over the years.
In his biographical information, he credits faculty at the University of Oklahoma with encouraging him to pursue medical studies and cites continuing support later from faculty at the University of North Dakota’s Medical School and its Indians Into Medicine (INMED) program.
Healthcare officials across the nation continually stress the need for American Indian and Alaska Native people to enter health and medicine fields to serve their communities. AI/AN professionals are still rare in many parts of the country.
But there are local medical education facts that should show indigenous young people doors are open for them to pursue important, health-related medical careers.
The University of Minnesota Medical School and special programs at its Duluth campus are especially welcoming for Native students. The University of Oklahoma is a leader in preparing Native physicians and health professionals. And UND’s INMED program notes it has produced 250 physicians over the years since its founding to produce health professionals for Indian communities in Northern Plains states.
When North Dakota started its multi-state INMED program in 1973, medical researchers could find only 26 American Indian physicians and just one dentist.
Wyatt shows commitments to those needs and goals in the announcement of his promotion.
“Mentorships and programs play essential roles in preparing future medical professionals and I also realize the significance of being an example to other American Indians and American Indian youth who might want to pursue a similar career path,” he said.
He said he will continue to pursue ongoing goals of the “team” at Hennepin Healthcare. That includes training residents who are becoming full-fledged doctors, recruiting diverse faculty, conducting research and “promoting innovations that advance the specialty of emergency medicine…”
That doesn’t stop when he leaves the confines of HCMC. He served on Hennepin Healthcare’s Board of Directors for six years, serves as co-chair for Hennepin Healthcare American Indian Collective, and as co-director of the MPact Indigenous Health Course at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
He recently joined the board of directors for LifeSource, the Minneapolis-based organ donor organizations for the Upper Midwest. It states that one organ donor can save as many as 75 lives, and that there are currently 2,700 people in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas waiting for organ transplants.
His work in professional associations reflect his commitments to improving and strengthening emergency medicine and encouraging young Native people to seek medical careers.
Dr. Wyatt is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine and the Association of American Indian Physicians.
He completed his own Emergency Medicine Residency at HCMC in 2003 and has held leadership positions in Emergency Medicine there since 2017.
Hennepin Healthcare insists there is nothing coincidental about Wyatt’s presence and upward mobility within the healthcare organization.
The Twin Cities metropolitan area, including Hennepin County, is one of the largest urban Native American centers in America. And Native American are not just patients in need of medical attention at HCMC.
Native Americans do work in various staff positions throughout the hospital. For instance, should you need emergency care at HCMC in the future, you just might meet Dr. Aaron Robinson, another emergency physician, on your arrival.
Dr. Robinson is a Menominee. He is a professionally certified physician in Emergency Medicine and Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and he is an assistant profession of Emergency Medicine at the University of Minnesota.
He explains his diverse interests in a biography for Hennepin Healthcare:
“I am interested in prehospital critical care and caring for our patients when they call 911. I am committed to working a team to provide the best care possible for patients.
“Coming from the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, I hold a special interest in American Indian health.”
