Heritage Snapshot: Part 169

Floyd S. Brauer, MD (CME Class of 1950), took his residency in anesthesiology from 1957 to 1960 at St. Joseph’s Hospital in San Francisco, California; Children’s Hospital in Oakland, Calif.; and Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. He practiced anesthesiology in Modesto, Calif. from 1960 to 1972 when he joined the Department of Anesthesiology at Loma Linda University. In the meantime, he became a Diplomat of the American Board of Anesthesiology in 1962. On Sept. 1, 1972, Dr. Brauer initiated and chaired the Nurse Anesthesia Program at Loma Linda University. During its 12-year history, the program trained 103 nurse anesthesiologists. Dr. Brauer chaired the Loma Linda University School of Medicine Department of Anesthesiology from March 1, 1982 to March 1, 1995. During his tenure, the Department started an Anesthesia Research Endowment Fund which reached $1.2 million, and started serving a new, free-standing Outpatient Surgery Center built onto the west end of the Faculty Medical Offices which opened in 1986. Because of his special interest in Neurosurgical Anesthesia, Dr. Brauer directed the Neurosurgical Anesthesia Services at the Medical Center. During Dr. Brauer’s leadership, the Department of Anesthesiology cooperated with the Loma Linda University School of Dentistry to start a medical residency program in Dental Anesthesiology. It was a first in the nation to prepare dentists in the skills of controlling pain and anxiety during dental treatment. It eventually became a national resource to provide professionally trained faculty for schools of dentistry wherever they were needed. One of the program’s unforeseen benefits was the facilitation of dental services for developmentally disabled persons in the Inland Empire who were impossible to manage without general anesthesia or deep sedation; patients who were not welcome in most dental offices that were not equipped to provide such services. Other patients that benefited from the program were pediatric patients and some adults who require special levels of apprehension control and some medical risk patients whose dentists prefer not to treat them in a conventional dental office environment. If the name Brauer sounds familiar, his son Stanley D. Brauer, MD, also an anesthesiologist, is the former mayor of Loma Linda. Dr. Brauer was not only known as a teacher, counselor, and administrator, but also as a philanthropist, world traveler, and member of the Loma Linda University Overseas Heart Surgery team.