Welcome to the University of Florida–Gainesville Department of Emergency Medicine.
It is a privilege to lead a department whose work stands at the front door of one of the region’s most advanced academic health systems. Every day, our faculty, residents, fellows, students, nurses, advanced practice providers, and staff bring extraordinary expertise, compassion, and purpose to the care of patients and families across Florida and the southeastern United States. Our mission is broad: to deliver exceptional emergency care, educate the next generation of emergency medicine leaders, advance discovery through research and innovation, and improve the health of the communities we serve.
UF Health Shands Emergency Department is a tertiary care center serving patients from four states across the southeastern United States. Our department also provides EMS medical direction across 13 Florida counties, extending our expertise well beyond the walls of the hospital. Our physicians staff an adult emergency department with the second highest patient acuity in the country. Across our emergency care enterprise, we care for approximately 150,000 patients each year and admit approximately 37,000 patients annually. As a Level 1 Trauma Center, Comprehensive Stroke Center, ABA Verified Burn Center, and Accredited Chest Pain Center, UF Health Shands provides the highest level of emergency care to a diverse and complex patient population.
Our clinical mission spans the full continuum of emergency care. At UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital, our physicians provide emergency care for children with a wide range of acute and complex conditions. The Children’s Hospital is home to one of only ten Level IV NICUs in Florida and provides advanced cardiac, pulmonary, and transplant care. We also lead two freestanding emergency departments — UF Health Shands Emergency Center–Springhill and UF Health Shands Emergency Center–Kanapaha — as well as UF Health Ocala Neighborhood Hospital, helping expand timely access to high-quality emergency care throughout our community. These 24/7 emergency facilities are 911 receiving sites staffed by UF Emergency Medicine faculty and supported by advanced imaging, including CT and ultrasound, laboratory services, and blood banking.
Our Gainesville clinical sites provide a dynamic environment for innovation in patient care, education, and systems improvement. The UF Health Shands Adult ER is a 37,000-square-foot, 66-bed, state-of-the-art critical care center with more than 65,000 visits each year. Built in 2009, the facility was designed to improve patient throughput and provide the infrastructure necessary for expert critical and trauma care. It also offers our residents and learners an exceptional educational experience, exposing them to a uniquely broad and high-acuity cross section of emergency medicine. UF Health Shands is the only burn center in northern Florida, with a catchment area spanning 13 counties and patient referrals extending to Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Our 21-bed UF Health Shands Pediatric ER, located in a separate tower and renovated in 2011, sees more than 24,000 pediatric visits annually and is staffed by UF board-certified or board-eligible pediatric emergency medicine physicians who are faculty in our department.
Education is central to who we are. We train residents, fellows, and students across all of our clinical sites, preparing them to lead in a rapidly changing emergency care environment. Our faculty are well represented in College of Medicine leadership and continue to be recognized with multiple teaching awards. Our fully ACGME-accredited residency program accepts 14 residents each year and has become a mature, highly established training program over the past decade. Its modular, human simulation-based curriculum reflects our commitment to educational innovation, experiential learning, and excellence in resident development. In addition, our eight distinct fellowship programs support advanced training across the breadth of emergency medicine and help grow the next generation of academic clinicians, educators, investigators, and operational leaders.
Our research mission is equally strong. The Department of Emergency Medicine fosters an active atmosphere of academic excellence by supporting scholarly productivity among undergraduate students, medical students, residents, fellows, and faculty. Our faculty are engaged in federally funded clinical and basic science research, as well as health services research, across a broad portfolio of topics including critical care and resuscitative medicine, clinical biomarkers, neurological emergencies, healthcare disparities, patient safety, medical education, simulation, and global health. These efforts reflect our belief that discovery should translate into better systems, better outcomes, and more equitable emergency care.
We are fortunate to be part of the University of Florida Health Science Center, the country’s only academic health center with six health-related colleges, six major research institutes, and versatile research facilities located on a single, contiguous campus. The UF Health Science Center, including its major research centers, institutes, and clinical enterprise, receives more than $300 million in NIH and other extramural funding. This environment creates extraordinary opportunities for collaboration across departments, colleges, and centers, including the Emerging Pathogens Institute and the University’s research initiatives through the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. These partnerships allow us to accelerate innovation and bring new ideas from the laboratory, classroom, and community into emergency care practice.
Our department also has a highly active prehospital care division that provides medical direction for hospital-based EMS services supporting ground, rotary, and fixed-wing EMS operations. We provide EMS medical direction for municipalities across North Central Florida, extending to the Gulf Coast, and our faculty also serve as medical directors for multiple county emergency medical services and law enforcement agencies. Our history of prehospital leadership includes primary medical direction for NASA medical support teams during the final 10 years of the NASA Space Shuttle Missions. Those medical support teams received special NASA certifications and participated in disaster training and onsite simulations to support shuttle missions originating from Cape Canaveral. Today, the University of Florida maintains a close relationship with NASA, reflecting our department’s enduring commitment to preparedness, innovation, and service in high-stakes environments.
As we look to the future, the Department of Emergency Medicine is focused on purposeful growth: expanding access to high-quality emergency care, advancing research that changes practice, developing innovative educational programs, and strengthening our community and prehospital partnerships. We are proud of our history, energized by our progress, and deeply committed to shaping the future of emergency medicine.
Please explore our site and contact us to learn more about our growing team at UF Health and the University of Florida–Gainesville.
Christopher Hoyte, MD MBA
Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine
Chief of Emergency Services, UF Health