Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda (1949–1950) and as a surgeon in the U.S. Navy on the hospital ship USS Haven (1953–55).
[1][3] Shires then became chair of surgery at Cornell University Medical College in New York in 1975, where he also served as dean and provost of medicine (1987–91).
Now part of the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, the burns centre has become an internationally recognised facility which is among the busiest in the USA, treating a thousand patients annually.
[1][2] He then served as director of the Trauma Institute at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, a post he held until his death.
[1][3] After President John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963, Shires was brought to Parkland Memorial Hospital from Galveston where he was speaking, by a NASA jet.
[1] His other research areas included the treatment of burns;[6] management of the severe exfoliating disorders, toxic epidermal necrolysis and Stevens–Johnson syndrome;[7] physiology of haemorrhage;[8] responses to endotoxin;[9][10] and the epidemiology of suicide.
[1] He was among the first to receive a MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) grant from the NIH/National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 1986, for his work on saline solutions in shock.