Dr. Dietrich Jehle, MD, FACEP, RDMS

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Get to know Emergency Physician Dr. Dietrich Jehle, who serves patients in Texas.

Dr. Jehle is an experienced emergency physician & a Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer (RDMS). He serves as Residency Program Director, Professor, and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston. 

With an impressive history of academic and medical leadership, he joined UTMB from Grand Strand Medical Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where he was Professor and Academic Chair of Emergency Medicine as well as founding Director of the Emergency Medicine Residency Program.

In regards to his educational background, Dr. Jehle graduated with his medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1979. He then went on to perform his internship and residency at the University of Pittsburgh in 1981 and 1982, respectively. 

A Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians (FACEP), the doctor is board-certified in emergency medicine by the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM). The ABEM certifies emergency physicians who meet its educational, professional, and examination standards.

Furthermore, he is board-certified in internal medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). The ABIM is a physician-led, non-profit, independent evaluation organization driven by doctors who want to achieve higher standards for better care in a rapidly changing world.

Upon embarking on his professional journey, Dr. Jehle assisted with the development of the Emergency Medicine Residency at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1982. He relocated to Buffalo, New York to develop a new Emergency Medicine Residency Program at the University of Buffalo which began in 1994 for which he served as the APD. 

Thereafter, he served as Vice Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at State University of New York at Buffalo, was the Clinical Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) for 17 years, and was promoted to the rank of Tenured Professor of Emergency Medicine and became the Associate Medical Director for the hospital in 2008. 

That same year, Dr. Jehle was the recipient of the Distinguished Physician’s Award for ECMC. A year later, in 2009, he was selected as a voting member of the Board of Directors for the Erie County Medical Center.

Among a host of other professional appointments, he served on the Board of the New York Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, was a grant reviewer for the Small Business Innovation and Research Program for the National Institute of Health, and was selected as a Trauma Site Surveyor for both New York and Illinois. 

For 27 years, Dr. Jehle provided supervision of medical care for game day guests for the Buffalo Bills and has been the on-field airway physician for Buffalo Bills home games. The American College of Emergency Physicians presented him with the National Teaching Award in 2000 and the Emergency Ultrasound Award in 2001. 

In 2007, Buffalo Business First awarded Dr. Jehle the “Health Care 50” Award, and The Buffalo News acknowledged him as “Buffalo Outstanding Citizen of 2009” for his life-saving efforts in a highway crash that he witnessed. In 2010, NYACEP presented him with the “Advancing Emergency Care” Award.

Emergency medicine, also known as trauma and emergency medicine, is the medical specialty concerned with the care of life threatening medical conditions or injuries requiring immediate medical attention. Emergency physicians are trained to care for a wide range of problems that require emergent medical help. These problems are often serious and may be life-threatening. 

Attributing his success to his passion, enthusiasm, intellectual curiosity, and having great teams, Dr. Jehle has co-authored several leading textbooks on emergency bedside ultrasonography, including “Ultrasound in Emergency Medicine,” the first text in its field in 1995. In 2003, he co-edited “Ultrasonography in Trauma: The FAST Exam” which was published by the American College of Emergency Physicians. He published the first study on the use of ultrasonography in blunt abdominal trauma by emergency physicians in the United States and the first emergency medicine study of the use of bedside ultrasound to evaluate gallbladder, aortic, renal, and first-trimester pregnancy pathology. 

In 2011, Dr. Jehle edited the first emergency eye ultrasound text, “Emergency Ultrasound of the Eye and Orbit”. In his role as Director of Emergency Ultrasonography, his group created a full-time emergency ultrasound fellowship at SUNY at Buffalo in the 1990s. In addition, academic emergency physicians from all over the United States and Canada have participated in the two-week UB mini-fellowship in bedside sonography over the last 25 years.

Dr. Jehle’s interest in resuscitation and airway management lead to the first study of head cooling in cardiac arrest in animals and the first study of oximetry in prehospital care utilizing conjunctival oximeters and arterial lines in helicopter flights. In addition, he founded and organized the first emergency medicine study of the use of bougies as an adjunct for intubation in the United States.

His interest in new technologies led to the organizing of the first LCD presentation at a national emergency medicine meeting as Chair of the Technology Committee for the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). Dr. Jehle helped found the SAEM Ultrasound Interest Group as a spinoff of the technology committee. With Dr. David Ellis, he helped organize one of the busiest emergency telemedicine systems in the country supporting 52 NY State prisons and two NY Federal Penitentiaries in the 1990s.

In January 2016, Dr. Jehle transitioned to assume the role of the Founding Emergency Medicine Residency Director for the Emergency Medicine Residency Program at Grand Strand Medical Center and Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of South Carolina. He helped Dr. Casey Wilson start an ultrasound fellowship in Myrtle Beach, SC in 2020 with two emergency ultrasound fellows per year. He also served two terms as a Board Member for the South Carolina Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Outside of practicing medicine, Dr. Jehle enjoys playing tennis and table tennis. He resides in Galveston, Texas, and is married with four grown children.

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