Joe Messick, MD, Memorial Award

Dr. William (Joe) Messick was a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the UNC School of Medicine. After completing his residency in General Surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, he returned to private practice in Banner Elk, North Carolina for five years. In 1990, he returned to Chapel Hill for a fellowship in Trauma and Critical Care. The following year, he joined the faculty at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, where he served as Director for the Trauma and Surgical Critical Care Units, as well as Director of Critical Care and Shock Research, until his untimely death on January 21, 1999.

Dr. Messick was the author of numerous scientific publications and was a frequent presenter at regional and national meetings. He was attending the 1997 American Association for the Surgery of Trauma meeting when he first because ill, which did not prevent him from presenting at the 1997 American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress. He was instrumental in the Carolina/Virginia Society of Critical Care Medicine Chapter’s expansion as a multidisciplinary forum for networking and exchange of ideas and was the current president at the time of his death. Dr. Messick had begun to speak about his experience as a critically ill ICU patient, and his presentation, A Change of Heart – Experience as an ICU Patient, was to have been the keynote address for the Carolina/Virginia Chapter meeting. The Board of Directors of the Chapter decided that the best tribute to Dr. Messick would be to show this videotape as the keynote address – his final gift to all of us who take our own lives for granted.

An award has been established in Joe’s memory to be given to the junior resident who excels during his or her critical care rotation and emulates those qualities which Joe possessed and stimulated in his colleagues.