Dr. Red, Surgeon

Dr. Red Hoffman received her B.A. in Biology with a Minor in Women’s Studies from Florida Atlantic University. In 1999, she moved to Portland, Oregon to study at the National University of Natural Medicine where she received a doctorate degree in naturopathic medicine (ND) in 2004. During this time, she also spent three months in Thailand completing a 500-hour yoga teacher training and six weeks in Mumbai, India studying homeopathic medicine. Ultimately, she chose to return to school and received her MD from OHSU School of Medicine in Portland, Oregon in 2010. It was at OHSU that Dr. Red first fell in love with both trauma surgery and with palliative care.

Dr. Red moved to Phoenix, Arizona to complete her general surgery training at Maricopa Medical Center (now ValleyWise Health) then to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to complete a fellowship in Surgical Critical Care at University of North Carolina and finally to Asheville, North Carolina to complete a second fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

As her father knew long ago, Dr. Red certainly was familiar with The Road Less Traveled!

Dr. Red now practices as an acute care surgeon (a mix of trauma, surgical critical care and emergency general surgery) at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, where she also serves as an Associate Medical Director of Palliative Care. She works as an Associate Hospice Medical Director for CarePartners Hospice as well, with a focus on inpatient hospice in the hospital setting. She is a member of the University of North Carolina Academy of Educators.

Dr. Red’s research has been published in multiple journals including The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, Surgical Clinics of North America and The American Surgeon. She currently serves on the editorial board for General Surgery News. Her narrative essay entitled “The Sound of Silence – When There Are No Words” was initially published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in August 2019 and was then featured in a May 2020 issue as one of the 40 best "A Piece of My Mind" essays published in the last decade.