In Memoriam: J. David Barry, MD, FACMT (1968-2022)

September 2022

ACMT mourns the untimely loss of friend, colleague, and longtime ACMT member, J David Barry, who passed Friday, September 2, 2022. 

We thank Dr. David Tanen for composing the following tribute: 

“We don’t see our friends every day and sometimes it is months between get-togethers, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t live in our hearts and minds on a daily basis. We were all shocked and saddened to learn that Dave passed away this past Friday. He had a remarkable career as a Father, an Emergency Physician, and a Medical Toxicologist and will be remembered for the love and patience that he devoted to his family, his students, and his colleagues.

Dave graduated from USUHS, completed his EM residency at San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium (Brooke Army Medical Center & Wilford Hall Air Force Medical Center) and his Medical Toxicology Fellowship at UCSD and served on active duty with the Army for a total of 25 years with multiple wartime deployments. Dave was a leader and a teacher, serving as an Associate Program Director at Brooke Army Medical Center and as Program Director for the Navy’s EM program for 7 years where he mentored hundreds of residents and students. Nationally, Dave was involved with GSACEP and served as the section President. For ACMT, many members remember him from the Board Review Courses he helped organize. 

Dave moved to Long Beach, California about 6 years ago when he retired from the military, but he wasn’t someone ready to retire. With his wife Megan, and sons Colin and Cameron, they bought a historic house near the beach and made it beautiful. In his spare time, when he wasn’t surfing or enjoying time with his family, he became the Assistant Chief of Emergency Medicine at the Long Beach VA Medical Center and a Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of California, Irvine. In 2020, he was elected to the ABEM Board and was co-editor for MyEMCert.

Jon Auten – a current Navy EM PD wrote that 'I can say for my part that Dave was so incredibly influential to me as a young academic physician, but more important.. he helped me as a young father. He impressed on me early on as an academic faculty that the work was important, but it was meaningless if it came at the cost of my family. He was honest in the fact that pursuit of balance was imperfect but more important than anything else that I would do during the early part of my career. I'm incredibly grateful for him and devastated by the loss.

We will all miss Dave.”

Sincerely, 

Louise Kao, MD, FACMT
President, American College of Medical Toxicology

Paul Wax, MD, FACMT
Executive Director, American College of Medical Toxicology