BGU-Trained Physician Treats Boston Marathon Injured
BGU-Trained Physician Treats Boston Marathon Injured
April 23, 2013
Israeli doctors have developed trauma expertise through improvisation and bitter experience, and they share that knowledge throughout the world. Israeli medical delegations have traveled to cities in the United States, such as Boston, to train American physicians in trauma triage, much of which was learned on the fly while dealing with repeated terrorist attacks.
Dr. Daniel S. Talmor
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Prepared Center for Emergency Response Research has transferred disaster-management strategies and techniques into academic programs.
Professionals engaged in emergency medicine from the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa come to BGU to learn how Israel copes with ongoing threats and emergency scenarios.
BGU’s Joyce and Irving Goldman Medical School emphasizes empathy, flexibility and responsibility in admissions decisions. Believing that doctors need compassion at least as much as high grades and test scores, BGU’s medical students need to demonstrate a commitment to and remain engaged in community outreach.
One graduate of this school lives this creed in Boston. He was also crucial to the treatment effort after the bombing at the city’s marathon.
Dr. Daniel S. Talmor graduated from BGU in 1991 and went to Beth Israel Deaconess 12 years ago as part of a fellowship after his residency at Soroka University Medical Center in Beer-Sheva, which is affiliated with BGU.
Talmor provided critical care to marathon victims and the two bombing suspects. For him it isn’t unusual to treat terrorists, civilians and soldiers side-by-side.
“There was a feeling of deja vu,” Talmor was quoted as saying in Israel’s Hayom newspaper.
“I can remember how, when I worked at Soroka, we used to have injured soldiers lying next to terrorists. The past 36 hours was pretty frightening, with sirens howling all the time, and I could even hear shots being fired near my house. I am pretty sure that people around here are going to understand Israel a little better now.”
Dr. Talmor is the director of trauma, anesthesia and critical care in the Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine Department at Beth Israel Deaconess. He is also an associate professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School.
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