Congratulations to the 2019 recipients of the College’s most prestigious awards.
The winners will be honored during ACEP19 in Denver.

John G. Wiegenstein Leadership Award

Sandra M. Schneider, MD, FACEP

Dr. Schneider is currently the associate executive director for clinical affairs at ACEP and adjunct professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. She remains clinically active as a part-time attending with Integrative Emergency Services at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas.

Dr. Schneider is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and board-certified in internal medicine and emergency medicine. After residency, she served in the U.S. Public Health Service in Hazard, Kentucky. She then returned to the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh and was the medical director for the emergency department at Montefiore (University) Hospital. She was then recruited to be the founding chair of the department of emergency medicine and professor of emergency medicine at the University of Rochester in New York. Just prior to moving to Texas, she was the senior research director and professor of emergency medicine at the North Shore LIJ Department of Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Schneider is a past President of ACEP, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, and the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine. She is also a past chair of the Residency Review Committee for Emergency Medicine and the Emergency Medicine Foundation. Her husband owns an ice cream store and her adult daughter is a crime analyst in Burleson, Texas.

John A. Rupke Legacy Award

Juan A. González-Sánchez, MD, FACEP

Dr. González-Sánchez was born in the Presbyterian Hospital in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He completed his pre-college years at the public school Luis Hernaiz Verone, graduating in 1978 with high honors. He was accepted at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus, in 1978 and graduated magna cum laude in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in physical education. In 1982, he was accepted at the School of Medicine of the University of Puerto Rico, from which he graduated in 1986. He then started a residency in emergency medicine there in 1986, from which he graduated in 1989. Immediately after graduation, he started to work as assistant medical director at the Puerto Rico Medical Center Emergency Room and as ad honorem attending of the emergency medicine residency program. Later, in 1991, a scholarship was granted to him by ACEP and the Emergency Medicine Foundation to attend the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center for a teaching fellowship which he completed in 1992. Also in 1991, he was appointed program director and chief of the section of the recently created University of Puerto Rico Emergency Medicine Section and Residency Program. From 1991 to 1993, Dr. González-Sánchez worked as the only full-time attending of the emergency medicine residency program, and together with a group of residents, he tried to get the residency program out of a probation status it had been in since 1990.

Unfortunately, the program was not accredited and closed in 1993. One year later, with the support of the School of Medicine of the University of Puerto Rico, the Department of Health, and the leadership of Dr. González-Sánchez, the emergency medicine program was reinstated and has been open for the last 25 years. This program has graduated a total of 220 residents and has been the source of more than 90 percent of emergency medicine specialists who work on the island.

In 2002, under the leadership of Dr. González-Sánchez, the emergency medicine section of the department of surgery became the clinical department of emergency medicine at the School of Medicine of the University of Puerto Rico. Following this, he was appointed department chair and residency program director. Under his leadership and with the support of both the faculty and residents, the department created the first emergency medicine elective for second-, third-, and fourth-year medical students in which more than 3,000 students have participated. It has off-service rotations for other residency programs in which more than 2,500 residents have participated and rotations for international emergency medicine residents from the Dominican Republic. The department had served as a role model for residency programs in the Dominican Republic and gives full support for new ones to come under the leadership of Dr. González-Sánchez. Also since 2002, under the leadership of Dr. González-Sánchez, the University of Puerto Rico Emergency Department has been the sponsor of the annual “Simposio Puertorriqueño de Medicina de Emergencia” meeting with more than 1,600 participants. This program has been one of the main sources of bilingual emergency medicine physicians for the mainland.