Avery Tung named Section Chief of Critical Care at UChicago Medicine

Avery Tung, MD, FCCM, an anesthesiologist and intensivist, has been appointed Chief of the Section of Critical Care in the Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care (DACC), effective July 1, 2021. He has served as the director of critical care services for the University of Chicago Medicine’s Burn and Complex Wound Center from 1998 to 2019 and has been the Quality Chief for the department of Anesthesia since 2007.

“Dr. Tung is a nationally and internationally recognized thought leader on quality improvement and has given many national and international presentations and named lectures on this and other topics over the past 25 years,” said DACC Chair Peter Nagele, MD. “He has made strong contributions to the field of critical care and has been an incredible mentor to generations of students, residents, fellows and junior faculty.”

Tung is a past President of the Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (SOCCA) and past Chair of the Critical Care Educational Track of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) annual meeting. He has contributed broadly to the improvement of critical care through other leadership roles, including ASA guideline task forces for procedural sedation, difficult airway management and central line insertion, and the 2013 SCCM task force for guidelines for pain, analgesia, and delirium management in the ICU.

He has served on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s anesthesiology and respiratory therapy devices panel and the general hospital and personal use devices panel and on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services technical expert panel for sepsis outcome measures. Dr. Tung is a Fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine, a prestigious credential that demonstrates a commitment to critical care excellence.

In addition, Tung has received multiple educational awards throughout his 25 year career, including recognition from the Pritzker School of Medicine, DACC’s Teacher of the Year Award, and election to the Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators.

His research interests have included NIH funded work on interactions between anesthesia and naturally occurring sleep, factors affecting physician decision-making, clinical topics in critical care medicine, and aspects of Anesthesia quality. He is a 1990 graduate of the Pritzker School of Medicine, did his residency at the University of California San Francisco and his critical care fellowship at Stanford.

A prolific writer and reviewer, Tung has been critical care section editor for the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia journal for the past eight years and grown the quality and quantity of published articles dramatically. As an author, he has published extensively in leading journals including JAMA, Critical Care Medicine, Anesthesiology, Anesthesia and Analgesia, Mayo Clinic Proceedings and Annals of Internal Medicine.

Tung will succeed Michael O’ Connor, MD, who has led the section for 26 years and elevated it to international renown, noted for both superb mentorship and research and clinical excellence. O’Connor recently was appointed Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs in DACC and will continue in his role as Executive Director of Critical Care Services.