Surgical Institute Physician Trains Others in Trauma Care

Dr. Dustin Smoot, M.D., FACS, is a fellowship trained surgical critical care surgeon, who, for the past two and a half years, has provided surgicalist services to Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls through the Surgical Institute of South Dakota.

At Avera McKennan, Dr. Smoot primarily takes trauma calls. “My practice is one hundred percent emergency services and trauma; my patients are those who come into the hospital,” he explained. 

Dr. Smoot is board certified in both general surgery and surgical critical care. He is a member of the Western Trauma Association, a group committed to the improvement of trauma care through research, education, sharing of clinical experiences, and the development of physicians of all specialties who are involved in the care of trauma patients. He is also an Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) instructor, meaning he provides trauma education to medical professionals throughout the state of South Dakota. 

“It’s the basic life support of trauma care,” Dr. Smoot explained. “I provide the training to physicians, advanced practice practitioners, physician assistants--anyone who might staff an emergency room in a rural location,” Dr. Smoot stated. “In partnership with Surgical Institute, the training was started during the time I practiced in Western South Dakota.”

The ATLS course is offered once a year in Spearfish and is, as of now, the only one offered there. The two-day course consists of one day of classroom learning and one day of practical experience working with manikins, where participants use realistic, lifelike products to perform trauma evaluations, emergency access and practical exercises.

Prior to joining Surgical Institute, Dr. Smoot was an emergency physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and in Des Moines, Iowa; before that, he was chief of surgery at Monument Health Spearfish Hospital. Dr. Smoot received his medical degree from the University of Kansas Medical School and completed his residency in general surgery at Iowa Methodist Medical Center and his fellowship in surgical critical care at Mayo Clinic. 

His fellowship training there was comprehensive. “In one year of surgical critical care at Mayo, we rotated through the intensive care unit, trauma intensive care unit, and anesthesia intensive care units-- mostly high-level critical care for patients,” he said. 

Dr. Smoot said he enjoys being able to make an immediate impact in a person’s life. “When someone comes in injured and I’m able to make an immediate impact by doing a procedure that stabilizes them, that is very fulfilling to me.”

As a resident of Spearfish, South Dakota, Dr. Smoot enjoys spending time with his family—his wife and three children--in the outdoors hiking, fishing and camping, as well as riding his Harley-Davidson.