James O. Wyatt MD, FACS

Dr. Wyatt has been actively involved in trauma and emergency general surgery for over 25 years, starting his career at San Jose Medical Center, an ACS certified and verified Level II trauma center in 1991. While there he was the Assistant Director of Trauma, Medical Director of the ICU, Vice President of the Medical Staff, and President of the San Jose Surgical Society. This was on the heels of his education and training that spanned the country—undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Harvard University, Medical School at Stanford, and surgical training in Chicago and Stanford. In the year 2000, he was recruited to become the Medical Director of Trauma at Moses Cone Hospital, a position that he continues to hold. Dr. Wyatt is committed to performance improvement, education, and quality in trauma care. In addition to their own internal quality process, Moses Cone Hospital became one of the early institutions in North Carolina to enroll in the American College of Surgeons Trauma Quality Improvement Program (TQIP) over ten years ago, and they continue to be involved in the North Carolina TQIP collaborative. The Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) course is the cornerstone of the acute assessment and management of trauma patients, and Dr. Wyatt has been instrumental in providing this course at a non-university-based, Level II Trauma Center for the last 15 years. Also, for the past 18 years, the trauma program at Moses Cone has produced an annual trauma symposium entitled, “Key Issues in Trauma Management”, for trauma care providers throughout the state.

All trauma centers in North Carolina require state designation in order to provide this specialized care for our communities; however, as a sign of further commitment to trauma care, several trauma centers in North Carolina are also verified by the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, and Moses Cone hospital is one of those centers. For the time that he has been in North Carolina, Dr. Wyatt has been constantly intertwined in trauma regionally, statewide and nationally. He was Chairman of the North Carolina Committee on Trauma between 2012 and 2015, and also a member of the national COT Verification Review Committee. He was the President of the North Carolina chapter of the American Trauma Society from 2004-2004. The North Carolina Office of Emergency Services Advisory Council has had him as a member since 2012. He is a member of EAST, AAST, and is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He has spearheaded an Annual TS Open golf tournament which has raised money for trauma victims over the last 4 years. Dr. Wyatt was President-Elect and President of the Medical Staff at Cone Health from 2014 to 2016. In addition to these other responsibilities, he continues a full-time practice in trauma, emergency general surgery, and elective general surgery with a focus on hepatobiliary disease and complex abdominal wall defects.