Louise W.kao MD

Louise grew up in Naperville, a western suburb of Chicago. The Emergency Medicine bug first bit while she was in college at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. As a first-aid worker for intramural sports, she looked forward to assisting injured players with the limited contents of a basic first aid kit and ice. While in medical school at Rush Medical College (1993-7), she co-founded an Emergency Medicine interest group - whose success was substantially assisted by the popularity of the TV show "ER". While at Rush, Louise also worked in the Illinois Poison Center as a Poison Information Specialist and discovered that she also enjoyed toxicology as a discipline.

Louise made the long trek to the Hoosier state for Emergency Medicine residency and then Medical Toxicology training at Methodist/IUSOM. She joined the Emergency Medicine and Medical Toxicology faculty in 2002 and currently serves as the Fellowship Director for the Medical Toxicology Fellowship at IUSOM as well as the director of the toxicology rotation. She has authored numerous works in the Emergency Medicine and Medical Toxicology literature and has collaborated in research projects. Currently, she edits a FOAM-ED series ACMT Toxicology Visual Pearls for Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM). She serves as the Vice President for the American College of Medical Toxicology and is active in the ACMT Research, Fellowship Director, Education, and Membership Committees.