Lemuel Dent, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Lemuel Dent is chief of surgery at Nashville General Hospital and associate professor and chair of surgery at Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee. He is also chair of the Nashville General Hospital Cancer Committee and serves as cancer committee liaison to the American College of Surgeons. Dent is board certified in general surgery, with additional certification in surgical critical care. Prior to joining Meharry, Dent served as director of trauma and surgical critical care for the Morehouse School of Medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta. Dent began his career as a staff surgeon for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and as a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve Medical Corps. Dent is a diplomat of the American College of Surgeons and has served as an associate examiner for the American Board of Surgery.

Dent served as president of the Morehouse School of Medicine National Alumni Association from 2002 to 2004 and was awarded the title of Alumnus of the Year in 2008. He has received several teaching awards, including the 2011 Kaiser Permanente Clinical Teacher of the Year. He was awarded memberships in the Gold Foundation for Humanism in Medicine in 2011 and the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society in 2012.

Dent received a BS in chemistry and an MS in pharmacy from the University of Georgia. After receiving his MD from the Morehouse School of Medicine, Dent completed a general surgery residency at Harlem Hospital, New York, and a fellowship in surgical critical care at Mayo Clinic. Dent also earned an MS in clinical research at Emory University and a Master’s in management of health care from the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management. Dent is an associate fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College. His research interests include multiple antibiotic-resistant, gram-negative infection and oxygen transport in critical illness.