Wayne McCormick stepping down as division head

Dr. Wayne McCormick is stepping down as the head of the Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine. He has been division head since 2015 and holds the William E. Colson Endowed Chair in Gerontology.  

McCormick is a graduate of Washington University Medical School in St. Louis and received an MPH at the University of Washington School of Public Health. In medical school he received the Fulbright-Sawyers Scholarship. During his training as an intern, resident and chief resident at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, he received the Alfred Pick Award for Academic Excellence. 

In 1987 he came to the University of Washington where he completed a Robert Wood Johnson Fellowship and residency in preventive medicine and was subsequently appointed to the faculty as an acting assistant professor in 1990. He rose through the ranks to professor in 2005.

McCormick served as medical director of Bailey Boushay House for 30 years and as section chief of the UW Medicine Long Term Care Service for 25 years.  

In addition to bedside and clinical teaching, McCormick coordinated the Long Term Care Service Rotation for UW Primary Care Internal Medicine and Family Medicine Residencies and served as a program tutor in the Minorities Medical Education Program, and as a preceptor for the Geriatric Nurse Practitioner Program. He established and led the Palliative Medicine Fellowship for 13 years.

He has served on the UW School of Medicine Appointments and Promotions committee and chaired the Department of Medicine Appointments and Promotions committee.

Nationally, he has served as president of the American Academy of Home Care Medicine, and president and board chair of the American Geriatrics Society. He has established a national reputation in both Alzheimer’s disease epidemiology and in health services research in long term care.