Dr. Lisa Thomas

Year First Awarded the Carson Scholarship: 1999

Dr. Lisa Thomas is a 1999 Carson Scholar and served as the Carson Scholars Fund’s Alumni Chair from 2004-2007. In high school, she was her school’s Valedictorian and was awarded the White House Presidential Scholar in person by President Clinton. Upon graduation in 2003, she went to New York University College of Arts and Sciences where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience summa cum laude. In 2007, she earned her MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. For her postgraduate training, Dr. Thomas was in the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency program, and in 2010-2011 she was the Chief Resident. Currently, Dr. Thomas is working at the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health (UMUCH), serving as the Chair of Emergency Medicine, the Medical Staff UMUCH Vice President, and a Board Member. When Dr. Thomas was a student at Johns Hopkins, she met her husband who is a surgeon and they have three children together now.

Dr. Thomas is a strong leader, teacher and seasoned mentor. She has mentored medical students, spoken at school and community events and currently participates as a committee member of Scouting America.

Dr. Thomas is a very accomplished physician who has been published in many academic journals and won numerous awards. In 2005 she was awarded the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Young Investigator’s Day Ehrlich Award. A few years later, in 2009, she received the Richard Wuerz Emergency Medicine Research Award at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2018 and 2021, she was named Baltimore Magazine Top Doc for Emergency Medicine. In addition to these accolades, Dr. Thomas has co-published 17 abstracts, 12 peer-reviewed publications, two non-peer reviewed and two book chapters.

Recently Dr. Thomas helped transform UMUCH’s Emergency Department (ED). She did this by working closely with the nursing and physician teams to improve patients’ access to care. Long wait times are a consistent challenge that UMUCH’s ED frequently faces. As Chair of the ED, Dr. Thomas has implemented “Rapid Assessment Zones”, which have dramatically helped the department. “Left Without Being Seen” patients went from 10% of ED patients to just 2%.

About a year ago Dr. Thomas experienced the most meaningful moment of her career. As she was picking up her children from school, a car swerved off the road because the driver, the grandmother of a student, was in cardiac arrest. Dr. Thomas quickly dove into action, called 911, and began CPR on the roadside. She asked a teacher to go and grab an AED – a portable, automated external defibrillator – and she was able to regain circulation. Dr. Thomas says that this was, “an incredible moment in my career where God put me in the right place at the right time and I was able to help save a woman…” The grandmother was able to receive care and left the hospital a few days later.

She was inspired by Dr. Carson’s book, Gifted Hands, when she was younger and she was very honored to meet him when she was awarded the scholarship. Dr. Carson later became her Clinical Skills instructor at Johns Hopkins, where he wrote her letter of recommendation for her Emergency Medicine Residency for which she later became Chief Resident. Dr. Thomas says, “He [Dr. Carson] has touched my life beyond words, and I am forever grateful to be a Carson Scholar because it signaled to me that others believed in investing me and I hoped to make a difference in the community like Dr. Carson did.”