The medical staff of Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s Sarasota campus recently honored two physicians for outstanding service and installed new physician leaders for 2022-23.

Dr. Herbert Silverstein was awarded the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award, and Dr. Wilhelmine Wiese-Rometsch was named 2022 Physician of the Year.

Selected by a committee of physician leaders from the Sarasota campus, Silverstein and Wiese-Rometsch were recognized at an annual medical staff meeting Oct. 18.

Related: SMH ranked sixth in state and first in region on U.S. News & World Report list

In addition to the physician awards, the SMH-Sarasota Medical Staff also appointed the 2022-23 officers for its Medical Executive Committee: Dr. Jonathan Hoffberger was named chief of staff, serving as the top representative of SMH-Sarasota campus’ 1,800-plus medical staff members and advanced practice providers. Hoffberger succeeds Dr. Richard Lichtenstein, whose one-year term ends this month. Dr. Sarah Temple was appointed chief of staff-elect.

SMH Lifetime Achievement Award

Silverstein was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for decades of research, innovation and dedicated service to Sarasota Memorial and countless patients who suffered from ear, nose and throat conditions across the nation. A longtime otolaryngologist in the community, Silverstein has spent more than 50 years evaluating and treating patients with hearing loss and tinnitus, otosclerosis and inner ear disorders, hyperacusis, Meniere’s disease, dizziness and balance disorders. His pioneering research and innovative treatment techniques have earned him a place among the most recognized specialists in otology-neurotology in the world.

Silverstein completed his residency and started his medical career in 1966 at the Harvard teaching hospital Mass Eye and Ear in Boston.

He also spent several years on the faculty at University of Pennsylvania Medical School before relocating to Sarasota in 1973 and joining the medical staff at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

He founded the Sarasota-based Ear Research Foundation in 1979 and established a fellowship program in otology-neurotology in 1983 that has provided advanced training to nearly 50 specialists in the field.

His research and innovations made him a leading authority on Meniere's disease and Otosclerosis. His surgical skill, instructional courses and leadership expanded lateral skull base surgery at SMH and helped lead to the creation of the North American Skull Base Society.

He has written and co-authored three books and more than 250 peer-reviewed publications, and some of the procedures he invented and pioneered, such as retrolabyrinthine vestibular neurectomy, continue to be used today. A talented composer and jazz pianist, Silverstein also has recorded 16 CDs and entertained many with live performances around town.

SMH Physician of the Year

A nationally recognized leader who has built more than 100 GME programs in the United States, Wiese-Rometsch joined Sarasota Memorial in 2015 as the founding director of the health system’s first GME program for physicians.

She helped build the Internal Medicine residency program from the ground up, in partnership with FSU’s College of Medicine, earning continuous accreditation with multiple commendations from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. She also helped SMH develop the Internal Medicine residency practice in Newtown - the first medical home for a historically underserved population.

Wiese-Rometsch’s passion for academic and medical excellence helped set SMH on the path to become one of the top 40 teaching hospitals in the country, according to a 2022 Fortune/Merative study.

In September, she was promoted to Chief Academic Officer and Associate Designated Institutional Official/Florida State University - SMHCS Graduate Medical Education Programs. Wiese-Rometsch, who also is a professor of clinical medicine, oversees all of SMH’s graduate medical education programs, which encompass not only the Internal Medicine program, but also the SMH/FSU Emergency Medicine Residency and Hospice/Palliative Medicine Fellowship programs.

She also oversees education programs for undergraduate medical education and outside resident rotations at SMH, and helps ensure the health system’s physician training programs meet the constantly changing requirements set by professional, educational and regulatory entities.

“Dr. Silverstein and Dr. Wiese-Rometsch exemplify the qualities every doctor should strive for,” said Sarasota Memorial Health Care System Chief Medical Officer Dr. James Fiorica. “Both are excellent clinicians who have demonstrated extraordinary care for their patients and extraordinary commitment to academic research and discoveries that improve care and address unmet healthcare needs.”

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Silverstein, Wiese-Rometsch honored by Sarasota Memorial Hospital