A Profile of Lieutenant General Kevin C. Kiley, MD: U.S. Army Surgeon General

As surgeon general of the Army and commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command, Lieutenant General Kevin C. Kiley, MD, has operational responsibility for Army medical treatment facilities all over the world.

Kiley was appointed to a four-year term as 41st surgeon general of the Army on September 30, 2004, by President George W. Bush.

“The surgeon general’s position is open to any medical provider in the Army,” says Army spokesperson Virginia Stephanakis. “The first people they look at are the two-star generals to see who is best qualified for promotion. In this case, we had a number of very good candidates, but General Kiley was selected based on his background, his experience, his command—both at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the U.S.—and his education.”

Kiley received his medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, DC, and served a surgical internship and then an obstetrics and gynecology residency at William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, TX. He served as chief of OB/GYN services at the 121st Evacuation Hospital in Seoul, South Korea, then returned to Beaumont, where he served first as chief of family planning and counseling, then as assistant chief, and later, as chairman of the Department of OB/GYN.

In November 1990, he assumed command of the 15th Evacuation Hospital at Fort Polk, LA, and in January 1991, he deployed the hospital to Saudi Arabia in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Upon his return, he was assigned as deputy commander for clinical services at Womack Army Medical Center, Fort Bragg, NC. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania and served concurrently as command surgeon for the U.S. Army Europe and 7th Army in Landstuhl. Immediately before his current assignment, Kiley was commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Lead Agent for Region I.

Among his awards and decorations are the Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Order of Military Medical Merit and the Expert Field Medical Badge.

The months since Kiley’s appointment have been extremely busy, says Stephanakis.

“When there’s a major deployment, it’s General Kiley’s responsibility to furnish the medical force that supports the troops who are overseas,” she says. “He is very involved in the technology being used, because it’s part of the medical command. We do a very broad spectrum of technological research to make sure we stay on the cutting edge. Many of these advances are later shared with the civilian community as well.”

Although hard data are still lacking, there is evidence to show that wounded soldiers who almost surely would have died in previous wars are being saved with today’s technologies and better medical care, says Stephanakis.

“We know that once a patient is brought to one of our facilities—even the ones that are very far forward, like the forward surgical teams—we lose fewer than 2% of all the casualties, and some of these people are very grievously wounded,” she says. “One of the sources of most of our casualties now is improvised explosive devices; that’s not anything we anticipated, but in many ways, it’s not much different from exploding artillery shells yielding the same types of injuries as we’ve seen in the past. ”

About three years ago, the Army expanded its training program for licensed practical nurses to include trauma care. They are now all required to pass the National Registry exam for EMS, says Stephanakis. “We have found that having them all EMS-trained is a wonderful thing, and we attribute some of our success to making that move,” she says. “It had been in the works for a long time, but it isn’t easy to go back and retrain people to new, higher standards. But we’ve been very successful at doing that, and we think it’s really paid off.”

On August 25, LTG Kiley will present the opening keynote address at EMS EXPO in New Orleans, where he will speak about military medical care in the Middle East and other parts of the world, and how new technologies may affect future EMS care in the United States. For more information, visit www.emsmagazine.com or call toll-free 877/EMS-EXPO.