Who am I? My name is Michael McGonigal, and I’m the Emeritus Director of Trauma Services for the adult Level I trauma center at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a member of the surgery faculty at the University of Minnesota. I’ve been here for 30+ years, learning the entire time. I’ve learned how to create the building blocks and combine them all together to make a top notch trauma center.

I started my career in 1987, when I was recruited by a top notch trauma director to help him build the Level I trauma center at the University of Pennsylvania. This program has flourished and is now one of the pre-eminent trauma programs in the world. After six years, I got the itch to run my own program. And after a nationwide search, I settled on Minnesota as my home for the next several decades.

My career has been almost exclusively dedicated to trauma and critical care, teaching residents and students, running a trauma center, and dabbling in some clinical research. But I’ve also learned a thing or two about how to break down complex systems, look at the pieces, improve them, and then put them back together. And I love teaching others how to do this and sharing how I think.

I’ve had the opportunity to watch trauma care advance over more than three decades, and have had the privilege of visiting more than two hundred trauma centers in the US and abroad. This has given me a unique perspective so I can comment on new (and not so new) ideas in trauma care.

My goal is to share the tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years, let you know about new and interesting ideas, warn you about bad ones, and in general, just have fun spreading practical knowledge about trauma. My target audience is you, a trauma professional in any discipline, who wants readable, practical information unencumbered by all the academic jargon. Basically, I am slowly downloading my brain, five paragraphs at a time.

But having said all that, don’t take me too seriously. I certainly don’t. Please enjoy this parody of me in a send up of a Dos Equis commercial.