Daniel Butler, MD
Dr. Dan Butler talks the teamwork of emergency care at Atrium Medical Center.
Watch his video.
I’m a trauma medical director for the Atrium Medical Center and when I first arrived in town we did take care of trauma patients as part of our general surgery practice. But I saw that there was a need to step up and better take care of our trauma patients especially. And in order to do that, we established ourselves as a trauma center, trauma center level 3 that’s verified by the American College of Surgeons. And I always had interest in ER as well as trauma and in fact, in the military, in the Army Reserve, taking care of soldiers obviously related to trauma. And so that led to me becoming a trauma medical director, starting the trauma center here at the Atrium. Our trauma volume have gone up from initial of about 350 patients per year now almost up to 700 patients per year. So it has almost doubled over last 5, 6 years.
I grew up in Southern Indiana and I was adopted by the American family. I originally was born in Korea. And after growing up, growing up in Southern Indiana, I went to undergrad school down in Willmar, Kentucky. I then went back up to Indiana to do medical school for four years at Indianapolis. That was followed by the surgery residency in Des Moines, Iowa for 5 years and then moved to Ohio for my general surgery practice and I’ve been here for 16 years since then.
I’ve been out to the West Coast and East Coast before for other things and I didn’t feel comfortable with the type of environment, culture. I felt more comfortable in the Midwest and also was closer to the family. And so, and this area offered a practice, the type of practice I was looking for as a general surgeon. That includes vascular surgery, includes breast surgery, includes abdominal surgeries, gynecologic, oncology surgery, traumas.
The big plus at Atrium Medical Center is the medical staff itself. We have a tremendous medical staff that supports each other, an excellent medical staff that provides good care to the patients and we also get along with each other well, as well as the nursing and other ancillary help.
When you take care of patients, it’s a teamwork. There’s multiple factors that I like being in Middletown or Atrium Medical Center. Obviously one is the medical staff, that we’re very close, that we all work together very well. The other one is you feel like you’re in a small community environment although you know, your urban, big cities are just down the road but yet you’re in a small town setting. It also offers the ability for you to do a variety of type of surgery that I was trained to do.