Walid “Wally” Ghurabi, DO, has spent his career investing in life-saving patient care in Santa Monica, from the ambulance to the emergency department.
For more than 40 years, he’s served as medical director of the Nethercutt Emergency Center at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center. He’s also trained generations of Santa Monica Fire Department paramedics in essential skills. And he helped launch the UCLA Mobile Stroke Unit, specialized ambulances that were first piloted in the city.
Dr. Ghurabi will be recognized for his extensive contributions to the community as grand marshal in Santa Monica’s Independence Day parade on July 4.
“I’m overwhelmed with gratefulness and joy,” said Dr. Ghurabi, vice chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “What a big honor for a kid from a little place in Lebanon, who worked his way through life at every stage.”
An early start in emergency medicine
Dr. Ghurabi, the son of a barber, learned Arabic, French and English in school. After high school, he received a scholarship for an 18-month program in Beirut to become an environmental health technician.
At 19, he landed a public health job in Saudi Arabia where he saved money to attend college. He also met his wife, Hilda, a nurse administrator. Hilda had a visa to work at a hospital in Michigan, so the couple married and moved to the United States when he was 24.
Dr. Ghurabi enrolled in college and studied environmental health. He found a job as an orderly at the rural hospital where Hilda also worked. He got his first look at emergency medicine witnessing devastating injuries caused by farming equipment.
The specialty of emergency medicine had not yet been established, so he observed primary care doctors call in surgical specialists from bigger cities to treat major injuries.
After graduating, Dr. Ghurabi planned to pursue a master’s of public health when a friend encouraged him to apply to medical school instead. His wife put him through school.
“I owe everything to Hilda,” he said.
By the time he finished medical school in 1976, there were a handful of emergency medicine residency programs for the fledgling specialty that wouldn’t become officially recognized until 1979.
Dr. Ghurabi was drawn to the variety of cases and the chance to provide life-saving treatment.
“In the 46 years I’ve been doing this, thousands of lives got saved, whether heart attacks or strokes or heart rhythm disturbances,” he said.
In 1980, the Ghurabis and their four children moved to Southern California to be closer to Hilda’s family. Dr. Ghurabi became medical director of emergency care at Santa Monica Hospital, which UCLA Health acquired in 1995.
He recalls the mentoring from specialists who taught him complex surgical procedures to treat the multitude of injuries and conditions that came through the door.
“How can you not be impressed and grateful and want to pay that back and stay around?” he recalled of his early mentors in Santa Monica. “They welcomed me when I had a heavier accent than this. They welcomed me with open arms.”
Community contributions
When he arrived in Santa Monica, there was still significant work being done to build and coordinate a modern Emergency Medical Services system. He began volunteering at the city’s fire department to supplement paramedics’ training.
“The firefighters and paramedics of the Santa Monica Fire Department were deeply committed to serving the community, and my role was to help provide focused medical education and clinical training that would support them in the field,” Dr. Ghurabi said. “In emergency medicine, the training has to be practical, structured and immediately applicable in high-pressure situations.”
He eventually became medical director for the Santa Monica Fire Department where he’s had the satisfaction of seeing the paramedics he’s trained go on to become fire chiefs.
Dr. Ghurabi said he’s particularly proud of his work with the nonprofit Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital. He served as a founding member of the medical advisory council that planned the 2015 reopening in South Los Angeles to meet the needs of historically underserved residents. UCLA Health is a founding partner.
“This is one of the most important achievements of my life,” he said. “They see 400 patients a day. I worked there when we first opened.”
In 2017, Dr. Ghurabi helped launch the UCLA Health Mobile Stroke Unit, which equips ambulances with a CT scanner and clot-busting medications. Santa Monica Fire Department piloted the program – the first of its kind on the West Coast – with UCLA Health. The three-vehicle unit responds to patients based on symptoms reported in 911 calls and provides rapid care to preserve brain function.
“It’s taking the hospital to the patient – that’s really the best way to describe it,” said Dr. Ghurabi, co-medical director of UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center’s primary stroke center. “Eventually we want to spread it all over the county.”
Dr. Ghurabi’s role as supervising physician at the Santa Monica UCLA Rape Treatment Center has placed him at the heart of an internationally recognized program dedicated to providing free, comprehensive, trauma-informed medical, forensic, counseling, advocacy, prevention and education services for adult and child survivors of sexual assault.
Ghurabi’s children grew up inundated with stories from the hospital. He is extremely proud that three of them followed their parents into healthcare careers. Two are physicians and one is a nurse.
“I’m the only kid from my immediate family that went to college,” Dr. Ghurabi said. “I think I compensated for that. The kids grew up in that environment where we talked about that at the dinner table. They soaked that up and acted on it.”
Dr. Ghurabi said it’s been an easy choice to stay in Santa Monica for almost his entire career. In addition to his administrative and academic roles, he works about four emergency department shifts a month.
“Santa Monica is my second home,” he said. “I live in the South Bay, but Santa Monica is where I spend most of my time.”
