The Medical Center Emergency Services group has given $300,000 to the Wayne State University School of Medicine's Department of Emergency Medicine to create a fund to support education and research in emergency medicine.

The Medical Center Emergency Services is a Detroit area physicians group consisting of emergency medicine doctors.

"We are passionate about our missions, and those missions are superlative clinical care and academics," said Padraic Sweeny, M.D., president of the Medical Center Emergency Services and chief of Emergency Medicine for Detroit Receiving Hospital, "and our academic mission consists of research, both clinical and basic, and very importantly, teaching, and this furthers our commitment to our academic mission."

A portion of the gift establishes the Medical Center Emergency Services Endowment for the Advancement of Excellence in Medical Education and Research. Another part is designated for the Ron Krome Memorial Innovators in Emergency Medicine Endowed Lectureship.

Dr. Sweeny also is a clinical associate professor of Emergency Medicine.

The mission of Medical Center Emergency Services, he said, "has always been to provide compassionate, state-of-the-art clinical care to our city's most vulnerable population. Medical Center Emergency Services has provided continual unwavering support for the clinical, research and education mission of emergency medicine in Detroit. Medical Center Emergency Services is the backbone upon which our nationally recognized residency training and top-rated research department was built. The Medical Center Emergency Services Endowment for the Advancement of Excellence in Medical Education and Research will assure this charge continues well into the future."

The fund will include support for faculty and student education, conference fees and travel, other academic activities, resident support, and research and research-related activities within the specialty of emergency medicine.

"We are deeply appreciative of the support shown by Medical Center Emergency Services," said Brian O'Neil, M.D., the chair of the WSU Department of Emergency Medicine and the Munuswamy Dayanandan, M.D., Endowed Chair and Emergency Medicine specialist-in-chief for the Detroit Medical Center. "In this era, when it is becoming increasingly more difficult to secure traditional sources of research funding, commitments such as these are vital."