Mark G. Roback, MD, is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Section Head of Emergency Medicine at Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHCO). In addition to his clinical duties, Dr. Roback oversees the clinical and academic work of 180 faculty who care for over 2000,00 ill and injured children each year in 7 emergency departments (ED) and urgent care sites across central Colorado; serving children in Colorado and the 7-state region.
Dr. Roback received his BS and MD degrees and was a Pediatric Resident and Chief Resident at the University of Minnesota and U of M Medical School. He went on to complete Fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. After fellowship, Dr. Roback published 2 textbooks on Pediatric Resuscitation education and began conducting research studies on ED Procedural Sedation. His interests in procedural sedation have progressed from single-center studies investigating sedation-related adverse events and randomized controlled trials of ketamine sedation to multi-center trials designed to identify risk factors for adverse events and to identify best practices in sedation for children. In addition to his research efforts, Dr. Roback has participated on expert, multidisciplinary sedation consensus panels which have published recommendations for sedation practice pertaining to standardizing sedation terminology, ketamine administration, pre-procedural fasting, unscheduled sedation, regulatory challenges and tracking and reporting outcomes of sedation.
Dr. Roback has gained national and international recognition for his scholarly contributions pertaining to procedural sedation. He has published widely on sedation and is a frequent invited speaker on the topic. His current interests include raising the bar for expectations of sedation efficacy and developing benchmarks for outcomes of sedation care.