Marty Makary

Martin Makary
File:Makary 971.jpg Dr. Marty Makary
Born	Liverpool, England
Occupation	Physician

Martin “Marty” Makary is a physician, author and television medical commentator. He practices advanced laparoscopic surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and teaches health policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Makary is known as an international expert in patient safety and served in a leadership role at the United Nations World Health Organization for the Safe Surgery Saves Lives initiative. He is an advocate for transparency in medicine and common-sense solutions to healthcare’s problems, such as The Surgical Checklist, which he developed at Johns Hopkins, and which was popularized in the Atul Gawande’s best-selling book Checklist Manifesto. Makary advocates innovations in healthcare, including videotaping medical procedures so patients can take home a copy for their records, lifting all restrictions on visiting hours in hospitals, and allowing patients to see their doctor’s notes in real-time. In 2009, the American College of Surgeons recommended Makary to President Barack Obama for the position of Surgeon General of the United States.

Early years

Makary was born in Liverpool, England and moved to Baltimore as a young child. His family later moved to Danville, Pennsylvania when his father took a job as a hematologist at the Geisinger Medical Center. Makary attended Bucknell University and later attended Thomas Jefferson University. He left medical school after his third year to enroll in the Harvard School of Public Health, where he obtained a Masters of Public Health (M.P.H.) degree, with a concentration in health policy. After completing his fourth year of medical school, by taking elective courses at Harvard, including the Kennedy Center for Government and Public Policy, Dr. Makary moved to Washington D.C. and started a surgical residency at Georgetown University.

Professional career

After a five-year surgical training program at Georgetown, Makary began sub-specialty training at Johns Hopkins, under famed surgeon Dr. John Cameron, before joining Dr. Cameron’s faculty practice as a partner and assistant professor. In his first few years on the faculty at Johns Hopkins, Makary researched and wrote many articles on medical mistakes and the prevention of surgical complications. He published extensively on the safety and teamwork culture in medicine and the benefits of using checklists in surgery. For these accomplishments, Makary was asked to serve in roles at the World Health Organization where he worked closely with Dr. Gawande, and others, to develop the official World Health Organization Surgical Checklist. For his early contributions to the field of medicine, Makary was given an Endowed Chair at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, becoming the youngest Endowed Chair at the time at the university. Three years later, he was named the Credentials Chair and Director of Quality and Safety for Surgery at Johns Hopkins.

Makary’s research led to several partnerships, including a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, to study obesity treatment, and a grant from the same agency to implement safety programs at 100 U.S. hospitals–a project he collaborated on with Dr. Peter Pronovost and the American College of Surgeons.

Books

Makary is the author of Unaccountable (Bloomsbury Press, U.S.A.) in which he proposes that common sense solutions can fix the healthcare system by empowering patients with information to choose where to go for their medical care. Before this book about the culture of doctoring, Makary authored a textbook of surgery used in many U.S. medical schools.

Advocacy

Makary is an advocate for transparency in healthcare. He regularly speaks on the need for hospitals to make their outcomes available on the internet so consumers can choose where to go, based on performance. He has also called for the public reporting of annual rates of catastrophic mistakes (i.e. retained sponges and wrong-site surgery) by hospitals. He and Dr. Bryan Sexton have urged hundreds of hospitals to take the "Culture of Safety Survey" and make their results available to their communities. Makary has also pioneered the concept that doctors should offer patients a copy of their procedures videos.

Surgery

Makary specializes in advanced laparoscopic surgery and performed the first laparoscopic Whipple surgery and the first laparoscopic central pancreas removal at Johns Hopkins. He also did the first laparoscopic pancreas islet transplant operation in the U.S. and was the first doctor to perform an islet transplant by isolating the cells in the operating room during the procedure.

Awards and recognitions

Makary is the recipient of numerous research and teaching awards, including the Best Teacher Award for Georgetown Medical School and Research Awards from the Washington Academy of Surgery and the New England Surgical Society. He has been a visiting professor at several U.S. medical schools and lectures frequently on medical care in the U.S.

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