With great sadness, we share news of the passing of Peter M. Winter, MD on Saturday, May 14, 2016.
Dr. Winter was the second Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, serving from 1979-1996 after Dr. Peter Safar. Throughout his influential career, Dr. Winter devoted himself to the recruitment and development of future researchers and clinicians, promoting excellence in patient care and the development of anesthesiology subspecialties, teaching, and innovation, and helped to make Pitt one of the nation's top research and academic institutions.
During Dr. Winter’s tenure as chair, anesthesia-related deaths decreased to almost zero. Many seriously ill patients who might previously have been lost or permanently disabled were revived through the use of pioneering life-support methods that Dr. Winter promoted. His leadership played a crucial role in many of the University's notable accomplishments in transplant, neurological, and cardiac surgery. By emphasizing the multidisciplinary cooperation required for those breakthroughs, Dr. Winter called attention to the often-undervalued roles of the anesthesiologist and intensivist.
Under his leadership, our department became one of the first to invest in training with human simulation, acquiring a full-sized computerized simulator and establishing a simulation center. In 2001, the facility was named The Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation, Education, and Research, or "WISER," in honor of Dr. Winter. WISER has since grown into a health system-wide training center, utilizing simulation-based education to provide a safer environment for patients of UPMC and its affiliates.
He authored more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and his research focused on oxygen toxicity, hyperbaric oxygen, and high-altitude physiology. These topics complimented his enthusiasm for mountaineering and the outdoors. He followed his passion into the mountains, participating in exploratory expeditions to Nepal in the 1970s and conducting research there.
We send our deepest condolences to the Winter family, who is planning a private memorial service later in June. In lieu of flowers, the Winter family is asking for donations in memory of Peter to be made to the American Alpine Club or Crag Law Center.