Following Dr. Watkins’ departure, Joseph “Jerry” Reves, MD, became department chair. “During his remarkable tenure, Dr. Reves brought the department to its current place amongst the most distinguished departments in the nation,” wrote Dr. Harmel in 2003 in a historical account of the department. At Duke, where he served as chief of the Cardiac Division, director of the Duke Heart Center, and chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, Dr. Reves earned a reputation for challenging others to explore new ways to improve patient care.
Under his leadership as chief of the Cardiac Division, Duke cardiac anesthesiology grew to international acclaim. As director of the Heart Center, Dr. Reves was instrumental in shaping and implementing the multidisciplinary model of cardiac perioperative care, which has become the standard for the entire country. When he became chair of the Department of Anesthesiology in 1991, he continued to encourage others to explore new ways to advance the field. “Sometimes you have to drag a department kicking and screaming to get to another level of quality and academic excellence,” recalls former resident and former faculty member Helene Benveniste, MD. “It takes a lot of guts and tenacity, which is what Dr. Reves has.”
Dr. Reves encouraged Duke Anesthesiology faculty members to develop their individual niches and focus their careers on gaining international exposure in areas that interested them. Helping to develop the careers of others gave him great joy. His departure from Duke in 2001 was inspired not only by the opportunities that awaited him in Charleston, South Carolina, where he assumed the role of dean and vice president for medical affairs at The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), but an eagerness to give someone else a chance to lead the department—a physician scientist by the name of Mark F. Newman, MD.