Scott B. Frame, MD Memorial Lecture

Scott Barnhart Frame personified the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST). He was young, energetic, and an enthusiastic mentor for medical students, surgical residents and his peers. He fought for well-developed comprehensive systems of trauma care and he believed that the disease of trauma did have solutions that could improve its outcome.

Scott Frame was born on January 31, 1952 in Portsmouth, Virginia. However, he grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, graduating from high school in 1970 and then attending the University of New Mexico for both his undergraduate training and medical school. He received his MD degree in 1980 from the University of New Mexico. He spent the next 10 years of his life on active duty in the navy. He returned to Portsmouth, Virginia for his internship and residency in general surgery, completing that training in 1986. He did a fellowship in Trauma and Critical Care with Dr. Norman McSwain at Tulane in New Orleans from 1987-1988. He completed two operational tours in the navy—the first on the USS Raleigh as a general medical officer and the second on the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), serving as the general surgeon on her commissioning crew, making him a “plankowner” of the Roosevelt. He completed his naval service at the Naval Hospital in San Diego.

In August of 1990, Dr. Frame joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, Tennessee as an Assistant Professor of Surgery. He remained there for 7 years, serving as the Director of the Trauma Service and the Director of Surgical Endoscopy while advancing to Associate Professor of Surgery with tenure. He also worked closely with pre-hospital providers and Lifestar Aeromedical Services. In October of 1997 he resigned from UT-Knoxville to accept a position with the University of Cincinnati as Full Professor of Surgery and Director of the Division of Trauma/Critical Care in the Department of Surgery. He remained in this position until his untimely death from colon cancer in March of 2001 at the age of 49.

Dr. Frame was known as a superb technical surgeon who would do anything necessary to save his injured patient, but also had the judgment that is required to know when not to operate. He believed that all patients needed to be treated the same, to prevent making mistakes. He was an excellent teacher and mentor, winning teaching awards in every program he served. He expected that those he taught would be as passionate about surgery and trauma as he was himself. He was loyal to those he worked with and respected and he was always honest. He would take strong positions and argue for them, but he would also consider opposing points of view. If the logic of the opposition proved correct, he would readily admit that he was wrong.

Dr. Frame was very active in the early days of EAST. He was a charter member of the organization who served in many ways. He was on the membership committee and the program committee, playing an active role in these committees as they helped establish the reputation of EAST and powered its early growth. He was actively involved in the scientific program at EAST, submitting abstracts and manuscripts to the program and encouraging his residents and fellows to do the same. He and his wife Joyce attended every annual meeting of EAST that was held until he became too ill from his cancer to attend.
 Dr. Frame’s contributions to the scientific literature in trauma were extensive and continued right up to the time of his death. Besides many important articles on trauma, Dr. Frame edited a book on Retroperitoneal Trauma with Dr. McSwain. At the time of his death, Dr. Frame was again serving with Dr. McSwain as editor of the Fifth Edition of the PHTLS training manual. Dr. Frame served as the associate medical director of PHTLS from 1994 on, continuing and expanding his long interest in pre-hospital care and taking the course around the world. He had accepted the position of Medical Director of PHTLS, to be assumed at the time of the publication of the Fifth Edition of the training manual.

Dr. Frame was a mentor, an inspiration, and a friend to many of the early leaders and members of EAST. He and his wife, Joyce, were always together at meetings and at home, and always ready to serve the trauma community in anyway that they could. Joyce has continued to serve EAST in supporting this lectureship in Scott’s name to ensure that his memory and his contributions to trauma care live on. As his good friend and mentor, Dr. Norman McSwain said, Scott Frame “embodied the trauma surgeon—Outspoken when he believed that he was correct, loving when he was needed, aggressive in the care of his patients and an excellent teacher to residents, other physicians and to the pre-hospital providers of the world.”

Scott B. Frame, MD Memorial Lecture