Dr Cherri Hobgood is the Rolly McGrath Distinguished Professor and Chair of Emergency Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.  She received her medical degree from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in 1989 and her clinical training in the UNC Emergency Medicine residency program. At the completion of her emergency medicine training, Dr Hobgood joined the faculty of UNC Department of Emergency Medicine under the leadership of Dr Judith Tintinalli. Throughout her career she has focused her research and educational efforts on designing effective, safe, patient-centered communication in the emergency department. Her educational content and interventions on communication topics such as death notification have been widely incorporated into interprofessional curricula throughout the world.  She is the author of more than 100 peer reviewed contributions to the medical literature which have been published in a variety of books and academic journals.

As a member of the UNC School of Medicine faculty Dr Hobgood served in a variety of leadership roles including Director of the Office of Educational Development, Director of the UNC Clinical Skills Center, Associate Dean for Curriculum and Educational Development for the School of Medicine, and Vice Chair of Emergency Medicine.

In her current role as chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Indiana University, the largest emergency medicine clinical education program in the nation, Dr Hobgood directs more than 150 faculty and the clinical operations of ten emergency departments providing care to half-million Hoosiers annually. Each year Indiana University emergency medicine faculty teach more than 400 medical students and matriculate 23 residents and 15 fellows into its two residency training programs and seven post-graduate fellowship programs. Dr Hobgood is a member of the Governance committee of the Eskenazi Health Foundation, Chair of the IUSM Council of Clinical Chairs, and Chair of the Board of Directors of Indiana University Health Physicians, a multi-specialty physician practice plan representing more than 1800 physicians.

Within organized medicine Dr Hobgood has served terms as Chair of the Council of Residency Directors Best Practice Task Force, President of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, chair of the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine Foundation Board and chair of the Governance Committee for the International Federation for Emergency Medicine.  She was the first woman elected to Chair the Board of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

She has been recognized with multiple awards including the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, the National Emergency Medicine Faculty Teaching Award, American Medical Association-Women Physician’s Council Mentor Recognition Award, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis Women’s Leadership Award and the American College of Emergency Physicians Award for Outstanding Contribution in Education.  She is an elected member of AOA and the Arnold Gold Humanism in Medicine Honor Society and in 2012 she was inducted as a Fellow of the International Federation for Emergency Medicine.

Without reservation, Dr Hobgood cites her most important role is as the mother of her two sons, Collin Campbell and Walter Winslow.