Today is National Doctors’ Day, a day set aside to recognize the contributions of physicians to individual lives and communities! Here at the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD), we wanted to take a moment to recognize our Medical Director, Dr. Clayton Kazan.
Dr. Kazan is a native Angeleno and earned his BS in Biology from UCLA in 1996. While at UCLA, he worked as an EMT for UCLA EMS for three years and moonlighted as an EMT instructor and a dispatcher. He then went on to medical school at the Chicago Medical School where he earned both his MD and MS in clinical pathology. While in Chicago, he worked as a volunteer Firefighter/EMT for another three years and taught EMT and Paramedic classes during his vacations. He then thawed out during an internship at the University of Hawaii before returning to UCLA for his residency in emergency medicine.
Since finishing residency in 2005, he has worked as an emergency physician primarily at St. Francis Medical Center; a busy ER and Trauma Center in South Los Angeles. Ever the workaholic, Dr. Kazan also served on the Clinical Faculty in Emergency Medicine at Harbor-UCLA and spent two years as the assistant medical director of the UCLA Paramedic Program, then four years as the Medical Director of the Los Angeles County Paramedic Training Institute (PTI). In April 2015, he got the opportunity to truly embrace his inner EMS geek by taking his dream job as the full-time Medical Director of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
Since Dr. Kazan joined our ranks, he has supported many critical projects, including the switch to submitting patient care records electronically and the new Mobile Stroke Unit, now serving LACoFD Division 4.
Thank you Dr. Kazan for being such a “vital” part of our team!