Professor Juan Carlos Puyana is the O’Brien Chair of Global Surgery at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and leads the RCSI Institute of Global Surgery in its work to improve access to high-quality, essential surgical care for underserved populations.

Professor Juan Carlos Puyana joins RCSI from the University of Pittsburgh where he was Director of Global Health-Surgery.

A renowned trauma/acute care surgeon and a global health educator, Prof Puyana is an expert in developing international capacity-building programmes in trauma, trauma registries, and trauma datasets in global surgery. As a trauma surgeon, Professor Puyana has worked in underserved emergency rooms and low-resource public hospitals in numerous Latin American cities and through this work he established reciprocal mentoring collaborations with several universities and trauma centres in Latin America.

During his time as President of the Pan-American Trauma Society, he was an influential leader actively promoting multilateral international collaborations and educational programs in the areas of trauma care, trauma ultrasound, disaster and emergency response and trauma courses across Latin America.

His current work seeks to develop community based interactions in rural Kenya to improve the safety and availability of blood transfusions in limited resource settings as part of an International NIH funded program called Bloodsafe. He participated as a member of the Global Health Committee of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and he co-authored the publication “Global Health and the Future Role of the United States.” He is now leading the IGS promulgating and expanding the work on surgical training, capacity building and perioperative teams workforce enhancement under the mission of the RCSI’s Global Health Agenda. Professor of Surgery, Clinical Translational Sciences & Critical Care Medicine,
Director for Global Health—Surgery,
University of Pittsburgh, USA

Chair of Global Surgery, Institute of Global Surgery,
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Ireland

Trauma Surgery