{"id":11305,"date":"2024-10-10T12:29:35","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T16:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/surgery\/trauma\/?post_type=directory&p=11305"},"modified":"2025-05-09T09:25:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T13:25:45","slug":"rachel-niehuus-md-phd","status":"publish","type":"directory","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/surgery\/trauma\/directory\/rachel-niehuus-md-phd\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Niehuus, MD, PhD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Assistant Professor
\nAssociate Medical Director, Surgical Trauma Intensive Care Unit
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

BIOGRAPHY<\/span><\/p>\n

As an anthropologist and a surgeon, Dr. Niehuus conducts research at the nexus of the social and health. For years, her projects were located within the health systems in Democratic Republic of Congo: on Ebola, fistula care, and medical humanitarianism there. Her first book, An Archive of Possibilities, explores repair and healing in DRC amidst repetitive wounding. As she describes the multitude of ways that Congolese cohabitate with violence, Niehuus argues that healing amidst persistent displacement, death, and war involves a reimagining of global relationality, building anew after antiblackness.<\/p>\n

Since arriving at UNC, Dr. Niehuus has begun three new research projects: she is writing about the ways that wound care shapes surgical trainees; she is conducting ethnographic research on delirium and dreaming in the hospital; and she is working with other researchers across the state to quantitatively describe North Carolina\u2019s most vulnerable patient populations. In addition to these projects, she is working to increase the use of robotic surgery in the division; and to establish a multidisciplinary clinic that serves patients recovering from critical illness, injury, or ECMO. Overall, she is passionate about understanding the surgeon-patient relationship and training the next generation of surgeons in the provision of equitable and high-quality surgical care.<\/p>\n

Outside of the hospital, Dr. Niehuus loves to spend time in the wilderness with her two children, co-learning survival in this quickly warming world.<\/p>\n

SPECIALTIES<\/h3>\n

Acute care surgery, robotic surgery, surgical critical care, surgical nutrition, enterocutaneous fistulae, hernias and abdominal wall reconstruction.\u00a0 Research interests: Health equity in the US and globally, structural racism, delirium and dreaming.<\/p>\n

EDUCATION<\/span><\/p>\n