Disaster Medicine

Bio: Dr. Jim Geiling currently serves as Chief of the Medical Service and Director of the Intensive Care Unit at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, VT, a component of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

Geiling is also Assistant Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Geiling, an internist and critical care specialist, is the former director of the Health Care Clinics at the Pentagon where he served as the Military Medical Task Force Commander for the Pentagon Disaster on 9/11. He recently retired as an Army Colonel following 25 years of active service during which he served in a variety of clinical, staff, and operational positions around the world. He has previously taught and practiced critical care medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center where he was also on the medical faculty of the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine. Dr. Geiling is a recognized national leader in the areas of emergency preparedness, disaster medicine, and medical countermeasures for terrorist events.

Following his undergraduate education at Bucknell University, he attended the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland where he received his MD degree in 1982. He then embarked upon a 25-year career in the Medical Corps of the US Army, which included serving 9 years in Germany and deploying to the Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and elsewhere. During his career he completed his medical training in Internal Medicine at Letterman Army Medical Center in  San Francisco and later Critical Care Medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He also studied disaster preparedness and medical response during a one-year fellowship with the DHHS' Office of Emergency Preparedness. In 2000 he assumed command of the 200-person medical clinic in the Pentagon, a position where he was called upon to practice his training in preparedness on September 11, 2001 and later that year during the anthrax attack.

Dr. Geiling left the Army in 2003 to come to his current position. In addition to his clinical, teaching, and administrative duties with the VA, he serves as Co-Director of DHMC's New England Center for Emergency Preparedness. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Military and Emergency Medicine at USU. His has written and spoken extensively in the field of disaster medicine, with recent work focusing on mass critical care.

Finally, he is a Fellow in the American College of Physicians, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the American College of Critical Care Medicine. He serves the ACCP as Vice-Chair of its Disaster Network and the Society of Critical Care Medicine as Vice-Chair of its Fundamentals of Disaster Medicine and Hospital Mass-Casualty Disaster Management courses.

The New England Center for Emergency Preparedness (NECEP) is a collaborative organization involved in the regionalization and coordination of planning and response for Northern New England in the case of a disaster or mass casualty event. The mission of NECEP is to apply leading-edge research and expertise from the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), Dartmouth Medical School, the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, and other Dartmouth resources to preparedness for large-scale emergencies across the Northern New England (NNE) region. The organization is dedicated to improving emergency response for the NNE region through collaboration with federal, State, and local agencies across the disciplines of emergency preparedness, homeland security, and public health, as well as with other organizations and institutions. While NECEP will disseminate best practices for preparedness nationwide, the Center has a primary responsibility to the DHMC, New Hampshire, and Vermont to ensure appropriate response capabilities.http://dms.dartmouth.edu/necep/mission/