Our Department
The BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine is part of the academic medical center at UW Health and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Our combined emergency departments care for nearly 110,000 patients annually, and our clinical emergency department at University Hospital, the #1 hospital in the state for the 10th consecutive year, is the only ACS-certified adult and pediatric Level 1 trauma and burn center in south central Wisconsin. In partnership with our internationally recognized critical care transport and retrieval service, we care for critically ill and injured adult, pediatric and neonatal patients from across the upper Midwest. And we are committed to quality and equitable health care.
Affiliated with the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, our department is an inclusive, supportive, and wellness-minded culture that is exemplified by collegiality and caring. We strive to provide a successful foundation for the rest of your career and will support you through mentorship, engaged teaching and diverse opportunities in academic medicine tailored to your specific interests.
Facts & Figures:
- We are forward focused academic department of more than 50 core faculty.
- We are 39 residents, 26 advanced practice providers, and more than 50 administrative and research staff.
- Department faculty focus on a breadth of targeted practice areas, including critical care transport and retrieval, emergency critical care, EMS, global health, health informatics/AI, pediatric emergency medicine, research, simulation, and ultrasound.
- Translational and collaborative research programs in the department partner with internationally recognized entities such as the UW–Madison College of Engineering, UW School of Nursing, and the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
- Outreach programs our faculty are engaged in include the Brain Health Registry, Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES), EMS Resuscitation Academy, Strategies to Innovate Emergency Care Clinical Trials Network (SIREN), and Vot-ER (healthcare location-based voter registration).
Our Emergency Departments
At the University of Wisconsin, fellows join a network of renowned hospitals and clinics staffed by experienced providers and professionals who are leaders in their field. Our clinical providers deliver true emergency care as part of an operationally efficient health system.
Located in Madison, University Hospital is a 505-bed regional referral center that is home to a Level I adult and pediatric trauma center, American College of Surgeons-verified Burn Center, one of the nation’s largest organ transplant programs, one of the nation’s first certified comprehensive stroke centers and the UW Carbone Cancer Center, one of 41 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive centers in the country. It has been ranked No. 1 of all Wisconsin hospitals, according to U.S. News & World Report.
The 41,000 square-foot ED is designed to meet the critical medical needs of nearly 70,000 adult and pediatric patients each year and over 300 patients per day. Patient acuity is high as demonstrated by a 27.4% admission rate. The ED has 58 beds, including 10 pediatric rooms, three Multiple Purpose Procedure (MPP) rooms, a four-bed flexible care area, and two physician-in-triage/intake rooms known as CareSTART (Safe and Timely Assessment and Rapid Treatment). We are also fortunate to have 24/7 pharmacists and social workers in our department.
Our critical care faculty also clinically staff University Hospital’s state-of-the-art, 18-bed intensive care unit plumbed for multimodality monitoring and eICU cameras. University Hospital is also recognized as an ELSO Center of Excellence Gold Status for ECMO and one of only a few academic centers in the U.S. recognized as a Center of Excellence for Antimicrobial Stewardship by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
Learn more about University Hospital.
UW Health’s East Madison Hospital is one of the most advanced wellness centers in the country with full medical/surgical inpatient services. This 56-bed community hospital sees healthcare as a holistic endeavor with a mission to not only diagnose and treat patients when they’re sick, but also to partner with them in health and wellness. East Madison Hospital is a certified Acute Stroke Ready Hospital by The Joint Commission, indicating its high level of stroke readiness and response.
Our emergency department cares for a diverse group of patients in this community setting where services and specialties available continue to expand. The 16-bed emergency department cares for approximately 32,500 adult and pediatric patients annually, and our faculty also provide medical direction for a newly opened ICU. With rapidly increasing volumes, we anticipate expanding both our staffing paradigm and physical footprint here in the near future.
The Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine delivers compassionate, high-quality, evidence-based emergency care to children from throughout the region and across the state. Clinical care is primarily delivered at our 11-bed dedicated pediatric emergency department at the American Family Children’s Hospital—a nationally -ranked, 111-bed facility with pediatric and neonatal surgical intensive care units that have served the special needs of children for more than 100 years. It is a busy Level I trauma center, one of two in the state, and the only Level 1 burn center in Wisconsin.
The pediatric ED cares for approximately 17,000 pediatric patients annually—many with high acuity—and is staffed by a knowledgeable, growing group of fellowship-trained pediatric emergency medicine faculty working closely with trainees from pediatric and emergency medicine residencies, as well as medical students at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Pediatric patients treated here account for 22% of total patients seen at the UH ED annually, and pediatric patients requiring hospitalization are admitted directly to the American Family Children’s Hospital.
A dedicated team of specialized pediatric nurses and respiratory therapists also staff pediatric ED alongside 24/7 child life, pharmacy and social work services, with the department having a strong, collaborative relationship with pediatric/neonatal critical care transport teams. View our pediatric emergency medicine providers.
As one of the nation’s distinguished five-star Veterans Health Administration medical centers, the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital is 87-bed acute care facility provides tertiary care to 95,000 veterans across 19 counties in Wisconsin & Illinois and includes one of the few heart, lung, kidney, and liver transplant and LVAD programs within the VHA.
The Madison VHA hospital is physically contiguous with University Hospital and houses an 11-bed emergency department that provides care to 13,500 adult patients annually and is accredited as a Level 2 Geriatric Emergency Department by the American College of Emergency Physicians. Our faculty physicians provide 12 hours of attending physician coverage daily, and we partner with emergency medicine pharmacists, Women’s Health, Mental Health, critical care and palliative care services to provide comprehensive emergency care for veterans.
A busy Level III trauma center that is part of the Beloit Health System, this 111-bed community hospital and 26-bed ED is located 45 miles south of Madison on the Wisconsin/Illinois border. The ED cares for approximately 36,000 patients annually.
This hospital hosts our residents during their PGY-2 and PGY-3 years and provides a clinical home for a number of our fellows to grow as independent providers. Learn more about Beloit Memorial Hospital.
UW Health Med Flight is a premier air and ground critical care transport and retrieval service that has served the upper Midwest for over 35 years and logs more than 2,200 transports per year. Our program is CAMTS-certified and has long been recognized in air medical circles for its success in providing one of the safest air medical transport services in the country.
We partner with leading FAA-certified and industry-accredited Metro Aviation, Inc. to maintain, operate and pilot all aircraft, and we are one of only a few programs in the country to transport with a licensed physician routinely on board. Our ground ambulances transport patients of any age and are equipped as mobile ICU/NICU, and we also operate a busy air and ground Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) Transport Program.
Learn more about UW Health Med Flight.
Our Partners
UW Health System
UW Health is the sponsoring institution for our training programs and is a recognized national leader in numerous medical fields.
As the integrated health system of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW Health serves more than 800,000 patients each year in the Upper Midwest and beyond with more than 1,800 physicians and 24,000 staff across six main hospitals and more than 90 outpatient sites. UW Health partners with the UW School of Medicine and Public Health to fulfill patient care, research, education and community service missions.
- UW Health Hospitals, which includes both University Hospital on the UW–Madison campus and East Madison Hospital on the east side of Madison, has been ranked No. 1 in Wisconsin for 13 years in a row by U.S. News and World Report.
- University Hospital is one among a select set of U.S. hospitals named to Newsweek’s “Top 100 Global” list, which includes hospitals in 11 countries around the world. American Family Children’s Hospital is also nationally ranked as a top children’s hospital.
- UW Health has been designated by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation as a Leader in LGBTQ Healthcare Equality in the Healthcare Equality Index for several years.
- University Hospital and American Family Children’s Hospital are recognized as a Gold Level Center for Excellence for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (Extracorporeal Life Support Organization).
Learn more at uwhealth.org or read more facts & figures about the UW Health system.
The Graduate Medical Education programs at UW Health give you the opportunity to expand your professional skills under the guidance and mentorship of nationally respected doctors, health professionals and researchers. Our residencies and fellowships include more than 80 graduate medical education programs designed to improve care and train the physicians our community and our country need.
Learn more about what we can offer you: UW Health Graduate Medical Education.
UW School of Medicine and Public Health
A recognized as an international, national, and statewide leader in education, research, and service. 
Founded in 1907, it transformed into the nation’s first school of medicine and public health in 2005 to integrate the principles and power of interwoven medical and public health approaches in all of its missions.
With more than 5,500 employees, including over 2,000 faculty, the school’s engagement spans the entire state of Wisconsin and includes a deep commitment to improving population health. This commitment manifests itself in innovative models that serve as paradigms for the rest of the country.
Members of the school rapidly translate discovery into application and continually foster synergies between clinical care, education and research. Consistently ranked among the nation’s top medical schools, SMPH has established high-performance academic programs that are intentionally distributed across the entire spectrum of academic medicine. The school is ranked 22nd in National Institutes of Health funding for schools of medicine in 2023, according to rankings from Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research. Its faculty members hold appointments in 27 departments — 17 in the clinical sciences and 10 in the basic sciences. The faculty is composed of some of the nation’s leading researchers, educators and clinicians. This includes several National Medal of Science recipients and National Academy of Science honorees.
Learn more at med.wisc.edu.
