G. Patricia Cantwell, MD

About

G. Patricia Cantwell, MD, FCCM is the chief of pediatric critical care medicine at Holtz Children’s Hospital. She oversees the Holtz Children’s Hospital PediPals team, an interdisciplinary pediatric palliative care program that has been active since she started it in 2008.

Dr. Cantwell earned her medical degree from Bowman Gray School of Medicine/Wake Forest University. She completed her pediatric residency at Portsmouth Naval Hospital and a fellowship in pediatric critical care at Jackson Health System, where she has been part of the attending staff since 1990. She has received multiple awards for her contributions to the medical community as a professor.

Early in her pediatric critical care career, Dr. Cantwell recognized the importance of palliative medicine. She became board-certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine in 2010. From 2009 to 2015, she served as medical director for TiLLiKids, a State of Florida Partners in Care: Together for Kids program, overseeing the Pediatric Palliative Care program with Heartland Hospice. She currently chairs the steering committee for the Florida Pediatric Palliative Care Consortium under the Florida Palliative Care Coalition.

Since 1994, Dr. Cantwell has served as the medical manager for FEMA Urban Search and Rescue South Florida Task Force 2. She has deployed with the team for numerous catastrophic events, including the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2021 Surfside building collapse, and several of the most severe hurricanes.