Dr. Charbonnet Presents Life at the Med

Some even missed their free periods to ask questions of Charbonnet, who spoke about the job she loves – working the night shift at the only adult, level 1 trauma center within a 150-mile radius and one of the busiest in the nation. Drawing on cases from patients outside the Mid-South, she choked back tears when talking about one young woman who died after a four-wheeler accident. But she also described the victories, saying that the Med’s Elvis Presley Trauma Center, which treats 13,000 patients annually, boasts a 97% survival rate.

The medical staff achieve this success rate in a facility with only 13 rooms and four operating rooms. Fundraising for a new facility is ongoing, she said.

She asked the boys for several promises:

• Memorize the phone number of an emergency contact (in case they lose their phones).
• Locate fire extinguishers in their homes and check the expiration dates.
• Always wear their seatbelts and appropriate helmets.

Charbonnet’s longtime friend, English Instructor Jeff Posson ’03, introduced her. A 2003 graduate of St. Agnes Academy, she earned a degree in structural engineering at Notre Dame. After working for several years in Chicago, she felt called to a different path in life. She spent two years doing relief work in Haiti and Indonesia before entering the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. After receiving her medical doctorate, she completed her residency at Cleveland Clinic and MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and went on to serve as a disaster medicine fellow at the University of Massachusetts in Wooster, Massachusetts, before returning to Memphis.