Christopher R. Carpenter, MD, MSc

Christopher R. Carpenter, MD, MSc, assistant professor of emergency medicine, is honored for his significant contributions to evidence-based medical training at Washington University Medical Center.

Colleagues report that he relentlessly pursues and shares knowledge, with a particular emphasis on evidence-based medicine. He developed the Emergency Medicine Journal Club curriculum, including the Evidence-Based Medicine Toolbox, an anthology of more than 1,000 articles and lectures pertinent to developing skills to critically evaluate scientific literature. He became director of Evidence-Based Education for the Emergency Medicine Division in 2007. He is the primary investigator of a multicenter graduate medical education trial evaluating the effectiveness of evidence-based medicine curricula in 2010. This work has resulted in the development of a series entitled »Evidence-Based Diagnostics» in the peer-reviewed journal Academic Emergency Medicine.

Carpenter’s mentees describe him as a compassionate physician and mentor who imparts the skills to foster integrity and courage. He has a particular talent for bringing current evidence-based research results to bear in the clinical setting, even under stress.

Carpenter has won several teaching awards from emergency medicine residents and won the national Emergency Medicine Residents Association Annual Teaching Award in 2006.

He received his bachelor’s degree from Hope College in 1990 and his medical degree from Washington University in 1994. He began postgraduate education with an internal medicine internship at Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Va., dive training with the U.S. Navy, and three years as a battalion surgeon at a Marine Corps air station; he entered emergency medicine with an internship and residency at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. In 2007, he graduated in the charter class of Washington University’s K-30 Masters of Science in Clinical Investigation program. He joined the Washington University faculty in 2003.