Peter Meong Rhee (born September 18, 1961) is an American surgeon, medical professor, and military veteran.

[1] During his 24 years in the United States Navy, Rhee served as a battlefield casualty physician in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He rose to national prominence when he served as the attending physician to U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords of Arizona, as well as other victims, following the 2011 Tucson shooting.

[5] In 1987, Rhee earned his medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine.

After testing HemCon at the Navy Trauma Training Center, Rhee concluded in December 2005: "I've tried every one of these products, many times, on many different kinds of wounds.

[9] Rhee was appointed as Professor of Surgery and Molecular Cellular Biology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and continues to consult for the Office of Naval Research and the Marine Corps War Fighting Laboratory.

[11] In January 2011, Rhee became the subject of national media attention as the attending trauma physician for U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, who had been shot in the head near Tucson.

From his youth in South Korea and Uganda—where he once watched his surgeon father remove a spear from a man's belly—to frontline surgery in Iraq and Afghanistan, to trauma centers on the urban battlefields of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.[17] "It took a long time to be convinced that I should write this book," Rhee stated.

He states that he wrote the book to document from the medical provider point of view what actually happened when the Congresswoman was shot in the brain and so that others could learn what a trauma surgeon is.

In April 2012, Rhee was selected as the Hometown Hero for the Thunder and Lightning over Arizona open house at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Rhee's areas of research interest include hemorrhagic shock; suspended animation for trauma; hemostatic agents; resuscitation immunology and formulation of resuscitation fluids; traumatic brain injury; transfusion and coagulopathy; trauma training; and advanced portable electronic medical devices including those for communication and documentation.