Dr. David Vitberg started his career in the fire and EMS service as a teenager, volunteering as an EMT on the east end of Long Island where he grew up. He remained active in collegiate EMS and graduated Brandeis University Cum Laude in 1997 with a dual degree in Biology and Chemistry. He attended Upstate Medical University College of Medicine in Syracuse, New York during which time he became a Paramedic and worked for Rural Metro Medical Services in the Central New York 911 operations division. He graduated SUNY Upstate Medical University in 2001 and was inducted into the AΩA Medical Honor Society and received the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) award for Excellence in Emergency Medicine.
Between 2001 to 2006 Vitberg completed a five-year combined residency training program in both Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) and R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. During his final year of residency training, he served as Chief Resident of the combined training program and received both the Distinguished Service Award and the Robert J. Doherty MD Exemplary Teaching Resident Award from the Department of Emergency Medicine at UMMS.
Post-residency, Vitberg went on to complete a two-year fellowship in Critical Care Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. During this subspecialty training period Vitberg provided care for military personnel at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, rotated through many of the specialty ICUs at Washington Hospital Center, completed training in the PICU at Children’s National Hospital and managed critically ill patients at the NIH Clinical Center. He also conducted laboratory research on Septic Shock and Anthrax toxicity. Some of his research on bundled care initiatives for patients with septic shock was published in the journal Critical Care Medicine in 2010.
As each segment of training was completed, Vitberg attained board certification in Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Medicine. Throughout his intern, residency and fellowship training years, Vitberg remained active in fire and EMS services and in 2017, based on his long-term experience in the realm of the emergency services, became eligible to sit for and attained board certification in the subspecialty of Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Vitberg currently maintains board certification in three specialites: Emergency Medicine (ABEM), Critical Care Medicine (ABIM) and EMS (ABEM).
After completing his residency and fellowship training, Vitberg returned to his roots and began volunteering with fire and EMS agencies in Baltimore County. He was a top EMS responder with two volunteer fire companies in Baltimore County and in 2010 received citations from the Governor and Maryland General Assembly for excellence in EMS service. He completed his initial firefighter training with the Maryland Fire Rescue Institute (MFRI) in 2011 and has since completed many other trainings and certification programs in other fire and rescue disciplines. Between 2011 to 2023 he served first as Assistant and later Deputy Medical Director for Baltimore County Fire Department. In that role, he educated, mentored, and supported EMS providers across the department including the first two paramedics embedded with the Baltimore County Police Department’s tactical team. In 2022, Vitberg completed MFRI pumps training and was cleared to function as an engine driver/pump operator.
Parallel to his service as an operational medical director in Baltimore County, Vitberg served as a member of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center GO-TEAM and Program Medical Director for the Paramedic training program at the Community College of Baltimore County. He is a founding member of the Maryland Chapter of the National Association of EMS Physicians.
Between 2014 to 2023 Vitberg served as Division Chief for Medical and Surgical Critical Care Medicine at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. In this role he created a hospital-based critical care service from the ground up, chaired multiple hospital committees, built a ‘low frequency high acuity’ simulation training curriculum for his multi-disciplinary critical care team and worked regularly on a wide array of safety and quality initiatives. In 2021 he attained the Baldrige Foundation Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Certification in healthcare process improvement. Every year between 2018 to 2022 Vitberg was recognized as a ‘Top Doctor’ in the field of Critical Care Medicine by Baltimore Magazine.
Vitberg is a passionate educator and enjoys both bedside teaching and field mentorship and education of EMS clinicians. He loves being in the field alongside frontline responders as he feels this is critical to fully understand departmental operations, to appreciate the successes and challenges of providing care in the street, and to augment clinical care capabilities in certain high-acuity situations and complex rescue operations. In 2021 Vitberg was awarded the Maryland Star of Life by the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems (MIEMSS) for his role in a water rescue with entrapment in Harford County. He was a lead editor for the widely utilized EMT textbook Emergency Care and Transportation of the Sick and Injured, 11th Edition published in 2017 by Jones and Bartlett Learning.
Vitberg joined DC Fire and EMS as Assistant Medical Director in July 2023. He continues to work clinically in the Emergency Department at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. In April 2024 he attained a faculty appointment as Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Since coming to the District, Vitberg led a team responsible for the launch of the DC Fire and EMS Whole Blood Program. The DC Fire and EMS Whole Blood Program has rapidly garnered national attention based on its system design, clinical outcomes, programmatic oversight, data acquisition and analytics.
Dr. Vitberg along with his wife Dori and three children are proud residents of the District of Columbia.