Douglas B. Coursin MD

Douglas B. Coursin is a Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Coursin joined the Mayo Clinic Proceedings Editorial Board in 2000 and has served the board most recently as a Member-at-Large with special interests in anesthesiology, critical care medicine, pain medicine, and graduate medical education.

Dr. Coursin was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and is from a family with a long medical tradition that includes practitioners in pediatrics, psychiatry, general practice, surgery, Ob-Gyn nursing, and midwifery. He is a graduate of Albany Medical College and is trained and board-certified in Internal Medicine, Anesthesiology, and Critical Care Medicine. He is a Professor of Anesthesiology and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, the current President of the American Board of Anesthesiology, and a member of the Residency Review Committee for the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education.

Dr. Coursin’s focus has been on the care of adult medical-surgical intensive care unit patients and optimizing the management of perioperative patients. He has co-edited two textbooks on Perioperative Critical Care Management, served on various peer-reviewed editorial boards of other leading journals, and published about 100 peer-reviewed papers. His early research interests focused on nutritional modulation of lung injury and inducible defense mechanisms to ameliorate the toxic effects of high inhaled concentrations of oxygen. His clinical investigations include optimal use of sedatives, analgesics, and paralytics in the intensive care unit; perioperative management of the dysglycemic patient; and anesthesia care provider health. Most recently he and his colleague, Dr. Kirk Hogan, have pursued potential vitamin D deficiency states developing during winter in anesthesia care providers residing in northern latitudes.