Seth Collings Hawkins, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine, was recently inducted as a fellow of The Explorers Club. The Explorers Club was founded in 1904 and supports scientific expeditions of all disciplines.
Dr. Hawkins is the associate director of the wilderness medicine fellowship at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and has published widely in the wilderness medicine literature, including as coauthor of several Wilderness Medical Society clinical practice guidelines. He is an anthropologist, writer and physician, double-boarded in both emergency medicine and EMS (field medicine).
Additionally, Dr. Hawkins serves as a medical advisor and director for the North Carolina (N.C.) Outward Bound School, N.C. State Parks, the Student Conservation Association, Recreational Equipment, Inc. and the National Association for Search and Rescue. He is also the local emergency medical advisor for all U.S. Forests in N.C. and the National Park Service Outer Banks (Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras National Seashores).
He has directed the Carolina Wilderness EMS Externship every year since 2011. This program takes two medical students/resident physicians and intensively trains them in wilderness EMS tactics and expedition medicine over a one-month residential period. The program originated in Burke County, N.C. as a county-based program, but in 2021 became expeditionary and now uses the entire state as its classroom.