Welcome to the Southwestern Toxicology Program and the North Texas Poison Center, Parkland Memorial Hospital, and Childrens Medical Center!  Thanks for visiting our “home.”  I am truly fortunate to be affiliated with this program; based within the world class facilities of the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) Medical Center campus.  This has been an active fellowship; with new fellows arriving every year since the program began.  We are saddened to see our graduating fellows, Javier Caldera and Rouhy Prueitt, leave us and head out into the cruel world.  Their time with us brought many-a-smile.  However, I am pleased to have our new fellows, Marc Labat and Rich Barrera, start their “toxic” journey.   

Our faculty continues to grow.  Stacey Hail, one of our previous fellowship graduates, joined the group in May 2006.  She is a superb teacher, has a great fund of knowledge, and I am very happy to have her on-board.  There are two great additions coming this fall.  We are very excited to have Colin Goto, the fellowship’s first graduate, return from San Diego.  Colin will be our first faculty member based at Childrens Medical Center.  We are also very excited to have Paul Wax join our crew.  Paul has excelled at the highest levels of the toxicology circle and he assumes the position as President of the American College of Medical Toxicology in the Fall of 2006.  Once Colin and Paul are on board in the Fall of 2006, we will have eight toxicology board-eligible or board-certified physician toxicologists and one ABAT boarded PharmD. 

Our Section is within the Division of Emergency Medicine here at UTSW.  The emergency medicine (EM) program has existed since 1997 and has 16 residents per class.  The Division is very busy academically and also includes fellowships in Government Services Emergency Medicine Services, Administration, and Medical Toxicology.  One of the faculty, Ahamed Idris, just received a $ 2.2 million grant from the NIH as a part of the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium.  He will use the grant to open a Center for Resuscitation Research.  The Division is very involved in Nuclear-Biological-Chemical warfare and Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Various faculty, under the direction of Ray Swienton, have created the Core Disaster Life Support Course that is endorsed by the American Medical Association.

Parkland Memorial Hospital is one of our primary clinical sites.  The Parkland Emergency Department is a very busy facility that sees almost 100,000 patients per year.  The aspect that makes it particularly exciting to work within is the phenomenal pathology.  Untold diseases I had only read about before coming here; now I see them almost routinely.  Multiple toxic exposures present to the Parkland ED daily.  The local EMS system is aware of our “toxic” interest and our psychiatric emergency room.  They thus often bypass other facilities to bring patients to us.

Children's Medical Center is the other primary clinical site.  It is a major referral center for north Texas and sees over 90,000 patients per year.  Providers at other facilities are often nervous caring to toxic children and frequently refer these patients to Childrens Medical Center.  We are more than happy to assist in their care. 

The North Texas Poison Center opened in its current facility in early 2004 and is a spacious facility with excellent support.  The Fellows and I are based in the Center.  The Center is located right within Parkland!

The Toxicology service reputation has rapidly grown within and outside the campus and many health care providers wish to do rotations with us.  Our rotators routinely come from the Parkland EM program, the Oklahoma osteopathic EM program, the Pediatric EM Fellow program based at Children's Medical Center, Pharmacy students from various Pharmacy schools, and medical students from the UTSW medical school and other medical schools. 

It has been a pleasure to share some aspects about our program.  Please contact us for further information or questions.

Have a great day…

Kurt Kleinschmidt