Catleya Award Recipient

Dr. Juan Carlos Puyana, MD (2009)

Dr. Juan Carlos Puyana is currently an Associate Professor of Surgery and Critical Care, Trauma Surgeon, Director of Surgical ICU, Director of the Surgical Critical Care Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at Presbyterian Hospital.

Dr. Puyana received his M.D. from Javeriana University in Bogota Colombia. He is an Editorial Board Member of the Adult Multi-Disciplinary Critical Care Knowledge Assessment Program.

Before working at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Puyana was a Fellow in Surgical Critical Care at the School of Medicine, State University of New York in Stony Brook, New York. And he was also a Post Doctoral Associate/Instructor in Trauma and Surgical Critical Care in the Department of Surgery at Yale University, School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

Prior to his positions at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Juan Puyana was a Co-Director Surgical ICU Brigham and Women’s Hospital Boston, Massachusetts, Assistant Professor of Surgery.

On 9-11 Dr. Puyana was one of the Pittsburgh physicians attending a conference in New York who were recruited onto the city’s emergency medical teams to treat the injured from the World Trade Center.

In 2003, Juan Carlos Puyana representing UPMC Trauma and CCM received the annual Outstanding Services Award by the Pittsburgh Insurance Club honoring him for excellent service. Dr. Puyana was singled out for his and his associates' excellent surgical and postoperative care of a 17 year old man who suffered blunt abdominal trauma during a football game.

Dr. Puyana is the author of numerous medical research publications including the book Surgical Critical Care, An Issue of Surgical Clinics (The Clinic: Surgery)

Dr. Juan Carlos Puyana, has maintained close cooperation with his peers in Colombia and motivated by his desire to be able to bring something back to Colombia has found the opportunity to do so through a collaborative research program. He is the architect of traineer, a five year collaborative research program funded through a grant awarded by the Fogarty International Center at the National Institute of Health.

The traineer program was established in 2007 as a partnership between Colombia and UPMC. This program enables visiting Colombian surgical doctors to pursue certificates or even Master’s Degrees in clinical research at Pitt through the Clinical Research Training Program.