Donald F. Zimmer, MD, FACEP

A Hoosier native, Dr. Zimmer graduated Magna Cum Laude from Notre Dame in 2004.  During his time at Notre Dame he spent the summer of 2002 at the Casa Del Corazon in San Pedro Sula, Honduras working with orphans with HIV.  He returned following graduation and worked in Guatemala and El Salvador as well.  He requested a matriculation deferral to medical school and spent 1 year after graduation from ND in Leogane, Haiti working with the Notre Dame Lymphatic Filariasis program.  During medical school at Indiana University Dr. Zimmer continued to work in multiple areas of Haiti intermittently during his training and during his fourth year lived and worked in rural Kenya with the IU AMPATH partnership.  Dr. Zimmer was in his intern year of residency at Mayo Clinic in 2010 when Haiti was hit with a devastating earthquake, quite possibly one of the worst natural disaster humanitarian crises of the last century.  Dr. Zimmer took a leave of absence from residency in order to work in Haiti with the Red Cross and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative in building a post-operative recovery center for injured Haitians.  The center quickly grew from several patients to several hundred within days, and worked with US SOCOM to help decompress local hospitals and health care facilities and house and reconnect families.  After returning to residency Dr. Zimmer helped foster involvement from Mayo Clinic, and helped lead disaster recovery teams partnering with local institutions during the rebuilding effort, ultimately spending a month with Mayo partner, L’opital St.Luc, helping to open one of Haiti’s first intensive care units, available to the general public. Dr. Zimmer has continued to work with St.Luc in the 11 years since the earthquake and has seen the hospital grow, and has participated in care through the cholera epidemic, hurricanes, floods, mudslides, and political chaos.  In the fall of 2019, Dr. Zimmer began his work with Nereus Medical Solutions during the crisis in the Bahamas following Hurricane Dorian.   He currently also works as an attending Emergency Physician at Memorial Hospital in South Bend, and serves as the Director of Medical Education for Beacon Health System.  He is also a deputy officer for the St. Joseph County Sheriff’s Department and serves full time on the SWAT team.