Two doctors who trained at Regional One Health’s trauma center later returned to take leadership roles at the hospital. 

Dr. Martin Croce, Regional One Health’s senior vice president and chief medical officer, and Dr. Andrew James Kerwin, chief of trauma, trained at the Elvis Presley Trauma Center, then left to pursue roles elsewhere. They both later returned to Regional One. 

Croce earned his medical degree at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Medicine, located half a mile from the public hospital in the Memphis Medical District. During that time, he completed a surgery internship at the Elvis Presley Trauma Center when it first opened in 1983. 

In 1989, Croce left Memphis for a fellowship in surgical critical care at the University of Miami, Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida, but returned to Memphis a year later.

“Being away for a year only strengthened my desire to return,” Croce said. “I knew of no other program that had the patient volume, the academic opportunity for good clinical research, and the ability to teach students and young surgeons in training. And they were going to pay me to do it. This was the easiest decision in the history of decisions.”

Regional One Health has long been a chief training ground for UTHSC students, residents and fellows. More than half of all physicians in Tennessee receive training at Regional One Health through its affiliation with the university. 

Before transitioning to his current administrative role, Croce served as the medical director of the Elvis Presley Trauma Center from 2000 to 2018. Through the years, Croce had offers to go elsewhere. 

“I stayed, despite opportunities to leave, because this hospital and trauma center has remained steadfast to the goals of excellent patient care, teaching and clinical research,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade my time here for anything.”

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Croce’s colleague, Dr. Andrew James Kerwin, also first arrived in Memphis because of UTHSC, where he landed a fellowship in 1997. 

Prior to that, Kerwin had graduated from medical school, done an internship in his home state of Illinois and completed a surgical residency in Ohio. 

After training in trauma and critical care as a young doctor in Memphis, Kerwin built a career in Florida. He served as the acute care surgery chief at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville and the trauma medical director of UF Health Jacksonville, one of Florida’s busiest trauma centers. 

But for Kerwin, who’d cut his teeth in Memphis under the tutelage of pioneering surgeons at Regional One Health — at that time known as The Med — the intensity of his specialty training stayed with him. 

“I was here for a one-year intense training in trauma at The Med, and we were taking care of trauma patients every day in the ICU and in the operating room,” he said. 

Kerwin considers Dr. Timothy Fabian, who came to Memphis in 1980 with a plan to build a world-class trauma center here, one of the great pioneers of trauma medicine. 

“The work that came out of Memphis, and how to manage different sets of injuries, really set a standard in our country and became recognized around the world,” he said. 

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In 2021, at the height of the global pandemic, Kerwin returned to Memphis to become chief of trauma at the Elvis Presley Trauma Center. 

“I wanted to come back here and pick up on that legacy,” he said.