St. Francis physician
is top ER doctorState honors go to the West Oahu
facility's versatile chief of staff
Dr. Joseph Lewis, emergency room director at St. Francis Medical Center-West, has been named State Emergency Physician of the Year by Hawaii's Emergency Medical System.
Lewis did his postgraduate work in emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati Hospital in Ohio and spent about 2 1/2 years as an emergency physician at St. Francis Medical Center-Liliha.
He said he went to St. Francis-West after it opened in 1990 because of "an opportunity to direct the emergency room and to work in a full-service facility that has a lot of potential for growth."
Lewis also is chief of staff of the hospital, which was established to meet increasing community needs for emergency and acute hospital care in West Oahu.
"It's fun and it's hard but it's very rewarding," he said. "It really puts you in a position where you can help make things happen."
Running the emergency room is a challenge because of a shortage of specialists, including anesthesiologists, Lewis said. "You really have to work on your relationship with physicians ... to take care of our patients."
One of his responsibilities as chief of staff is to learn the concerns of the physicians and administration and "communicate those back and forth between the two groups and get everyone together to take care of patients," he said.
Although St. Francis-West is about one-third the size of the Liliha facility, it has the full spectrum of medical emergencies, he said.
It is also is one of the places on Oahu that specializes in hazardous materials and decontamination, he said, noting it is close to Campbell Industrial Park.
Lewis also collects equipment to support work of the Aloha Medical Mission in the Philippines. "We really like that because it makes us feel blessed that we have such good equipment, and equipment we would throw away, we can clean it and repackage it and they can use it," he said.
Lewis lives in Aiea with his family, including two children ages 9 and 12.