Dr. S. Terry Canale to receive
Dr. & Mrs. J. Elmer Nix Award
By Boone Brackett, MD
S. Terry Canale, MD, Chairman of the University of Tennessee-Campbell Clinic Department of Orthopaedics, and President of the Campbell Foundation, is the recipient of the Dr. and Mrs. J. Elmer Nix Ethics Award of the Clinical Orthopaedic Society. This award was instituted by a grant from Elmer and Rosemary Nix to honor an individual whose life’s work exemplifies the best tenets of medical ethics.
Dr. Canale is the distinguished former President of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and is a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon of the first rank, serving as Chief of Pediatric Orthopaedics at LaBonheur Children’s Medical Center, as well as Co-Director of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Fellowship at the fabled Campbell Clinic.
His tireless work is further exemplified by his continued editorship of Campbell’s Operative Orthopaedics, carrying on the great tradition of Willis Campbell, the first editor of this timeless opus.
He holds the Harold B. Boyd, M.D. Professorship in Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center and is also chairman of the Department of Pediatric Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine at that institution.
Dr. Canale is a native of Memphis, Tennessee, and his family history is intertwined with the history of that great city.
Dr. Canale’s undergraduate degree was obtained at the University of Virginia and he returned to Tennessee for his medical school training at UT, following which he completed his orthopaedic residency at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.
He joined the Campbell Clinic in 1974, where he served as Chief of Staff from 1993-2001.
His signal contribution to orthopaedic literature is legion, having edited three editions of Campbell’s Operative Orthopaedics; he is also the author or co-author of forty-eight book chapters and more than fifty-nine journal articles. He has served as guest lecturer and/or visiting professor at more than two hundred-eighty conventions, meetings and guest professorships.
To those scores of orthopaedic surgeons whose careers have been molded and uplifted by their association as students or residents of Dr. Canale, he passes the mantel of the ethical practice of orthopaedics as a true preceptor of ethics. With Terry, one need not ask what he says; one need only observe what he does.
It is with great pleasure that the Elmer Nix Committee of the Clinical Orthopaedic Society, the world’s second oldest orthopaedic society, bestows its most prestigious award, The Dr. and Mrs. J. Elmer Nix Ethics Award, upon S. Terry Canale, M.D.
The COS Ethics Award, and the Dr. and Mrs. J. Elmer Nix Endowment Fund, focus on and brings to the forefront an issue integrally intertwined with the medical community: ethics. The endowment fund is dedicated to the ethical principals that have grounded the medical field for 2,000 years, and calls more attention to the issue of ethics and its supporters. The endowment is awarded to an orthopaedic physician who demonstrates the ethical principals upheld by COS.
Foundation, is the recipient of the Dr. and Mrs. J. Elmer Nix Ethics Award of the Clinical Orthopaedic Society. This award was instituted by a grant from Elmer and Rosemary Nix to honor an individual whose life’s work exemplifies the best tenets of medical ethics. 
