Mark Plaster, MD, is not your typical emergency physician and certainly not your typical politician. Born the son of a minister in the Midwest, Dr. Plaster focused on academics and basketball throughout high school so he could land a full-ride basketball scholarship to college, where he met and married his college sweetheart, Rebecca. Dr. Plaster and Rebecca went on to raise three children, who, so far, have given them seven grandchildren.

Mark Plaster, MD

As an emergency physician, Dr. Plaster has spent most of his life working the night shift in some of our nation’s biggest cities. He received his law degree in health law so he could better understand the health care field and the policy and politics behind it. Dr. Plaster started writing for a medical magazine and eventually realized he could produce a magazine himself. He started a publishing company and grew it to produce two national magazines and one international magazine every month, all of which started on a picnic table and a dot-matrix printer in his basement. Today, Emergency Physicians Monthly is one of the most widely read emergency medicine publications in the industry, and Dr. Plaster’s “Night Shift” columns have been compiled into a book of the same title.

In 2001, with his eldest son preparing to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy, Dr. Plaster, at the age of 50, volunteered his medical expertise in service to our nation and joined the Navy Reserves. Dr. Plaster became Lt. Commander Plaster and was soon deployed to Iraq, where he led a shock trauma team during the first year of the invasion of Iraq. Upon returning home, he was again called on to serve his nation when he was asked to provide expert advice on an expansive classified report for the President of the United States through the Department of Homeland Security regarding our nation’s readiness for a large-scale catastrophic attack on the homeland. Lt. Commander Plaster was again asked to serve, and he returned to Iraq in 2008 to provide humanitarian care for the Iraqi people and train Iraqi medical staffs.

In addition to his successes as an emergency physician, veteran, lawyer, and businessman, Dr. Plaster now wants to take on one more challenge: member of Congress. Make no mistake, however, Dr. Plaster isn’t a career politician and isn’t looking to become one. He just wants to bring his experience to Washington to address the needs of the people of Maryland and the country.