Post-Residency Career

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ACEP Now: April 2026 (Digital)

Dr. Janiak with patients during his years in the U.S. Navy. (Click to enlarge.)

Dr. Janiak with patients during his years in the U.S. Navy.

After residency, Dr. Janiak served in the U.S. Navy from 1972 to 1974 as head of emergency medicine at the Naval Hospital in Pensacola, Fla. There, he met the love of his life, Michele, an emergency nurse, and they fought immediately. They married only nine weeks later. His career later took him to the Toledo (Ohio) Hospital (1974-2002), Fayetteville Memorial Hospital near Atlanta (2002-2004), and eventually to the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta (2004-2019), where he found deep fulfillment in teaching. He gave back to the specialty by serving as President of both ACEP and ABEM.

Beyond teaching, Dr. Janiak’s favorite moments on shift were spent sitting down with patients and talking about their lives, not just their illnesses. “My home,” he said, “was taking care of patients in the emergency department.”

For Dr. Janiak, patients always came first. Once, before fax machines or email, an administrator arrived in the emergency department and instructed him to implement a change because the Joint Commission required it.  Dr. Janiak knew it was not good patient care and, through his ACEP connections, also knew it was not an actual Joint Commission policy. He called a friend at the Joint Commission, signed out of the ED, flew to Chicago, walked into the Joint Commission office, obtained a letter clarifying the policy, and flew home to hand it to the administrator. It may not have been politically wise, but Janiak always chose his patients.

Emergency medicine was, in Dr. Janiak’s words, “just plain fun.” Every day was different. There was a thrill in pulling patients back from the brink of death and satisfaction in making the right diagnosis at the right moment.

Dr. Janiak never measured success by income. He started moonlighting during residency at $7.50 an hour. What mattered were the people. He believed emergency medicine only worked when physicians, nurses, and technicians functioned as a true team. At Toledo Hospital, he personally funded Christmas parties, raffles, and even cruise giveaways for nurses, not as extravagance, but as gratitude.

That team philosophy extended to difficult moments. When an emergency nurse struggling with opioid addiction was identified, Dr. Janiak sent her to rehabilitation and later rehired her in a tailored role to help screen patients for substance use and connect them with care.