Toxicology is the sub-specialty of Emergency Medicine that focuses on diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of poisoning and other adverse health effects due to medications, occupational and environmental toxins, and biological agents.  Dr. Mark Mycyk is the department’s Director of Clinical Toxicology and Toxicologic Research and a leading national authority in the field.  His research efforts foster multi-disciplinary collaboration to develop creative solutions for new toxicological problems and real solutions for old, recurrent toxicological issues. 

With Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Department of Pharmacy, Dr. Mycyk published a study in 2005 that examined the effect of the resident workweek on the occurrence of hospital-wide adverse drug events (ADEs).  With Northwestern’s Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), Dr. Mycyk is the PI on an ongoing project investigating the association of NEW (Non-traditional, Emerging, and Web-based) recreational drug use with spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries.  Data from that RIC partnership, and other ongoing poisoning studies he is conducting, have been reported at the annual AAP, ACEP, NACCT, and SAEM national research conferences.  He is a consultant to the Illinois Poison Center and a core faculty member of the Toxikon Consortium. 

The Illinois Poison Center and Toxikon are current partners in Dr. Mycyk’s other research projects, including a study on antidote utilization, the development of the delta anion gap (DAG) for management of toxic alcohol poisoning, an examination of emergency department observation units for cases of low risk poisoning, and several studies examining the utility of hospital toxicology screens in emergency department patients. 

Dr. Mycyk includes the Illinois Poison Center and the Toxikon Consortium in daily resident and student education  Dr. Mycyk's appointments include the following: