Baptist Memorial Health Care hires pediatric surgeon

Dr. Fawn Lewis recently joined Baptist Medical Group-Pediatric General Surgery and became the system’s first pediatric general surgeon.

She will serve the entire 14-hospital system; however, much of her practice will be concentrated at Baptist Women’s Hospital, the area’s only freestanding women’s hospital. The hospital recently added pediatrics to its gamut of services to provide one-stop care for area families, according to Anita Vaughn, CEO and administrator.

In May 2012, inpatient and outpatient surgery services and diagnostics transitioned from Baptist Memphis, Baptist’s flagship hospital, to Baptist Women’s Hospital. Construction recently began on a pediatric emergency department, slated to open in January 2015, which will be staffed by pediatric emergency medicine physicians. Hospitalists and an array of pediatric specialists will care for patients from birth to age 18 within the hospital’s expanded pediatric services.

“With her impressive credentials and wide breadth of experience, Dr. Lewis is the ideal fit for this position,” said Vaughn. “We launched a nationwide search to find the right pediatric general surgeon, and she was the perfect choice.”

Vaughn added Lewis will play a key role in developing the Baptist system’s pediatrics program, a priority for the system, according to its leadership.

Lewis will perform a variety of surgeries for patients throughout the region, including emergency surgery, as well as scheduled outpatient and inpatient procedures for newborns, children and adolescents.

She most recently served as a Division Chief of pediatric surgery at the Nemours Children’s Clinic in Pensacola, Fla. Lewis also served as medical director of pediatric trauma services at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola.

A Fellow in both the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatrics, Lewis is board-certified by the American Board of Surgery in general surgery, surgical critical care and pediatric surgery. She attended medical school at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and completed her residency in general surgery at Tulane School of Medicine in New Orleans. Lewis trained in ECMO, a special heart-lung bypass for babies, and created the pediatric surgery critical care fellowship at Children’s Memorial Hospital at Northwestern University Medical Center in Chicago. After completing critical care training there, she joined the Division of Paediatric General Surgery at British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to train in pediatric surgery at the University of British Columbia.