Born in Nashville, Tenn., Watkins earned his medical degree from the University of Tennessee in 2002, followed by post-doctoral training, faculty and hospital positions in various centers around the state of New York. He has been involved in all aspects of the clinical care of liver, kidney and pancreas transplant patients, hepatobiliary (liver and bile duct), general and minimally invasive surgeries.
The practice of medicine runs in Watkins’ family. His grandfather is a retired cardiothoracic surgeon who was the chair of the Department of Surgery at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, Calif. His uncle is an orthopedic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and a cousin is a vascular surgeon in North Carolina. “I come from a family of healers,’’ he said. “It’s in our genes to go into health care and take care of patients.”
His roles have included preoperative/pre-transplant evaluation, operative surgery, peri-operative management, in-patient care, long-term follow-up, deceased donor organ procurement, and living donor nephrectomies. Additionally, he has been active in the revision and development of clinical protocols, as well as the implementation of quality assurance/performance improvement initiatives.
Watkins completed his transplant fellowship (abdominal multi-organ transplant surgery) at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia Medical Center in New York, working with many pioneers in the field. He is board certified in general surgery by the American Board of Surgery and is accredited and certified by the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.
