John P. Williams, M.D.

The mission of the Department of Anesthesiology is to provide superlative service, excellence in education and world-renowned research (or as our motto states, Excel, Enhance, Enlighten).  To this end, we are focused to enlarge several aspects of our stellar department along all three linear.

The Department currently spans the spectrum of clinical care available in anesthesiology. Our sites include three world famous teaching hospitals: Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Magee Women's Hospital and Presbyterian University Hospital. We also provide care at three of the larger private practice hospitals in the region: St. Margaret's, Shadyside and McKeesport Hospitals. Specialty orthopedic care with an emphasis on regional anesthesia is provided at Southside Hospital and care for the Veteran’s of Former Wars is provided at the VA Hospital located on the Oakland campus.

Our first international campus opened in Palermo, Italy in 1997 and beginning in 2008 is incorporating into our residency training program.  This offers U.S. graduates a truly unique experience, training in an American Hospital with a European practice model.  An experience that only our program can provide.

The following core principals guide our Department in achieving our mission:  Excel (in clinical care); Enhance (today with tomorrow’s education) and Enlighten (the world with ground breaking research.  
Our chronic pain management group practices at five locations. The first is our interventional Multidisciplinary Pain Clinic. The Vice-Chair of pain medicine is Dr. Doris Cope. The Pain Medicine group performs approximately 4,500 fluoroscopy cases annually, and procedures run the gamut from epidural steroid injections to the insertion of spinal cord stimulators. The partner site for this clinic is our Pain Evaluation and Treatment Institute (PETI) which utilizes a wide variety of non-interventional approaches to treat or assist patients with their chronic pain conditions. All aspects of medical evaluation and management including physiatry, neurology, anesthesiology, gerontics, internal medicine and neurosurgery are represented. We also run three outpatient centers under the direction of Dr. A.J. Carvelli, Dr. Jeffrey Eck and Dr. Scott Brancolini.

Our Residency training program currently consists of 45 residents. Fifteen CA-1 residents are selected each year through the match. Our excellent educational experience affords boundless opportunities for our residents following graduation ranging from academic careers to further fellowships in sub-specialty areas. We offer ACGME approved fellowships in pediatric anesthesiology, critical care and pain medicine as well as advanced training in cardiac, neuro, hepatic, regional and obstetric anesthesia at the CA-4 level. This broad diversity of case mix and regional specialization is unmatched in the United States.

Our Anesthesiology group is responsible for staffing approximately 166 patient care sites each day at 9 different sites including one site in Palermo, Italy. This translates into caring for our over 110 thousand patients annually. This is an ideal educational milieu for residents and fellows as a full spectrum of anesthetic patient care can be experienced in a wide variety of provider environments. Our Department is associated with one of the best schools of nurse anesthesia in the United States. SRNA students receive instruction at each of our academic sites as well as several of the local hospitals.

Our Department, along with the University of Pittsburgh, proudly continues the strong tradition of research that was and is our hallmark. The University of Pittsburgh was ranked 7th nationally in NIH awards; and in 2006, has climbed to 6th ($447 million).  A remarkable feat achieved only by one university in the past 40 years (climbing into the top ten and then rising)!   Funding for the Department of Anesthesiology in FY06 was even better exceeding $20 million (U.S.) and ranks us second in the U.S. for Departments of Anesthesiology for total number of grants.

The research focus for our department remains concentrated in three main areas. The first is anesthetic mechanisms; our core group of investigators are Ferenc Gyulai, M.D., Gregg Homanics, Ph.D., Pei Tang, Ph.D., and Yan Xu, Ph.D.  Drs. Tang and Xu use NMR spectroscopy to unravel the interaction of anesthetic agents with specific receptors. Dr. Homanics uses recombinant DNA techniques in rodents to unlock the mechanisms for protein specific effects within the GABA receptor family.

Our second research focus is understanding the mechanisms of nociceptive (pain) sensation. Our core group of investigators are Gerald Gebhart, Ph.D., Mitchell Max, M.D., Debra Weiner, M.D. and Doris Cope, M.D.  Dr. Weiner focuses on examining pain states in the over 65 year-old population.  Dr. Gebhart is internationally recognized as a leading authority in visceral and neuropathic pain, while Dr. Max is internationally recognized as a leading authority on the genetic basis of pain as well as other symptomatic types of responses (dyspnea and nausea). 

Our third focus for research is patient safety. Drs. Paul Phrampus and Dr. Joseph Samosky are expanding the scope and breadth of our human simulation center. The physical size of our simulation facility now covers more than 10,000 square feet. Further, we are working with both the UPMC Health System and the University of Pittsburgh to train medical students, paramedics, nurses EMT’s, surgeons, pediatricians and others to focus on the safety of patients, first and foremost.  This is accomplished through the individual competency assessments, team training and high stakes assessment and examinations, as well as many other areas of clinical medicine. Additionally, we initiated a project to certify that all faculty are trained in difficult airway management and fiberoptic bronchoscopy using competency based exams; a first in the United States.

Finally, we are developing “smart alarm algorithms” to enhance the safety of our current anesthetic machines. We are striving to integrate a heuristic approach to problem solving that is integrated with the smart alarm algorithm and may someday be integrated into an automated delivery system.