First female medical director takes the reins at IMS
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThis year’s Indianapolis 500 saw several major milestones, including a near-record crowd at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a record payout for winner Josef Newgarden. But history was also made at the oldest building inside IMS, the IU Health Emergency Medical Center.
Dr. Julia Vaizer became the first female to serve as medical director for IMS and the NTT IndyCar Series this season, taking over from longtime chief Dr. Geoffrey Billows, who stepped down last year after nearly 20 years.
In an interview with Business of Health Reporter Kylie Veleta, Vaizer said the significance of her new role shows that women are leaders.
“It’s amazing that we’re talking about this. But the idea behind this is one day that this is not going to be news,” Vaizer said. “IndyCar has been incredibly supportive of women in every different role when it comes to motorsports, not just medicine, but also you see a lot of women over the wall wearing fire suits doing heavy, difficult jobs that traditionally have been thought as reserved for men.”
Vaizer is also an assistant professor of clinical emergency medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. She began her work with IndyCar in 2018.
She said she his humbled to be chosen to lead the medical team.
“It is in fact, the best medical team out there. And you know why? Because they’re really passionate about this place,” she said. “They’re really good at what they do. Every single one of us works in the emergency department somewhere in the city of Indianapolis and the perimeter, but it’s being passionate about being here and providing care.”
The Emergency Medical Center was built in 1948 and has been expanded in the ensuing decades. Each year at the 500, IMS becomes the second-largest city in Indiana, and the facility is meant to help not just drivers and crew members, but spectators as well.
“We have routinely 300,000 people plus. So think about a city of that size, what kind of medical emergencies or even basic trauma emergencies will you have, this is what we will see,” she said. “And we have ability to evaluate them, start treatment, start resuscitation, stabilize them, and get them transported to definitive care very rapidly.”
Also new to the series this year is the IndyCar Medical Unit, a state-of-the-art medical trailer that, while remained parked for the month of May, travels to every other race on the schedule.
Vaizer said the medical team is able to provide much of the same care at all races as it does at IMS, bringing a sense of comfortability to the drivers and potentially saving them a trip to the hospital.
“The idea behind it is that our medical team has been traveling for decades. But now we actually have a physical space to provide care to the members of the paddock, to the drivers for any either medical emergency [or] on-track emergency, where they’re [seen by] the same team that they already know from home, providing care for them.”
Vaizer adds the Emergency Medical Center at IMS also serves as a training ground for future physicians through IU Health.
“Every year here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, we host the elective for senior emergency medicine residents in motorsports medicine,” she said. “It’s really, really nice and ability to work with an academic center, where we can keep showing new generation of physicians what motorsports medicine is all about what mass gathering medicine is all about and build the future. It’s incredible.”