Dr. Edward Downs is a Virginia native who was first attracted to the possibility of a medical career by reading his pharmaceutical rep father’s copies of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Recognizing that his ‘mother and grandparents always wanted a doctor in the family’, Dr. Downs decided to pursue a medical education at the Medical College of Virginia after graduation from Old Dominion University.

He went on to Internships at EVMS and Wake Forest’s Bowman Gray School of Medicine where he developed his passion for Emergency Medicine. Board-certified in Emergency Medicine, Dr. Downs is a fellow of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine and is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at EVMS. He has spent 34 years in the high stress world of Emergency Medicine, caring for the medical needs of Tidewater residents in some of the area’s largest and busiest emergency rooms. His experience is an invaluable asset to I & O’s Trauma response efforts.

Dr. Downs developed an interest in Occupational Medicine more than a decade ago as the Occupational Health physician for the Ford Motor Company plant in Norfolk, where he stayed until the plant closed in 2007. He joined Dr. Baddar to focus on Occupational Medicine because he enjoys the opportunity to learn about a wide variety of jobs and to get to know the people who do them. Among his other certifications, he has special training in Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine from Duke University and is part of the Divers Alert Network.