Dr. Wapen completed undergraduate work at the Pennsylvania State University (1963-1967), taught high school chemistry, physics & general science in Wheeling, WV (1967-1969), received his MD degree from the West Virginia University School of Medicine (1969-1973), completed three-years of general surgery residency in San Francisco (1973-1976), and then began working as an emergency physician before emergency medicine became recognized as a medical specialty. He practiced as an emergency physician for 37 consecutive years (1976-2013), was board certified in emergency medicine for 30-years (1984-2014), is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians (FACEP), and is licensed to practice medicine in the State of California. He retired from the active practice of emergency medicine in 2014.
In 1970, he joined the United States Air Force Early Commissioning Program,
served eight years in the Air Force Reserve, and was honorably discharged in 1978.
In 1986, he was recruited by the San Francisco Regional Headquarters of the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) to be the physician member of the DEA SWAT
Team and functioned as their SWAT DOC for 2 years.
During his years of active practice, he worked in a variety of Emergency
Department (ED) settings from a 22-bed hospital with a single emergency room to
a Level-I Trauma Center with a sprawling ED. He also was a clinical instructor in
emergency medicine affiliated with Stanford University School of Medicine, UC
Davis School of Medicine, the United States Army Medical Corps at Letterman Army
Medical Center, San Francisco State University Nurse Practitioner Program, and The
Samuel Merritt College Physician Assistant Program.
For the past 24 years and continuing into the present, Dr. Wapen has functioned as
an expert in emergency medicine wherein he is retained to do forensic analysis of
both criminal and medical malpractice cases and to explain the medicine to lawyers,
judges and juries. He is a member of the Society of Forensic Engineers & Scientists
and the Forensic Expert Witness Association and has qualified as an expert witness
in emergency medicine at trials in the States of California, Alaska, Idaho, Michigan,
Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Florida.
