A native of Savannah, Dr. Murphy is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia in Athens, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology. While there, he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, received the Jasper Dorsey Award as Outstanding Junior and was named the Dean William Tate Scholar as Outstanding Senior.
Dr. Murphy received his medical degree with honors from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, where he was the recipient of a national Phi Kappa Phi Graduate Fellowship, the Alumni Scholarship and the Merck Manual Award, and was elected to membership in Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) medical honorary society.
Dr. Murphy completed his internal medicine residency at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was chosen for the Lee Fordham Award as the Outstanding Teaching Resident. He also completed his fellowship in digestive diseases and nutrition there before returning to Savannah to practice medicine, following in the footsteps of his father, longtime Savannah surgeon H.J. “Jack” Murphy, M.D.
Dr. Murphy is board certified in internal medicine and gastroenterology and holds the designation of Fellow in both the American College of Physicians and the American Gastroenterological Association. He is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the American Gastroenterological Association, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Gastroenterology, and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.
He currently serves as an assistant clinical professor of internal medicine at Mercer University School of Medicine in Savannah, and has been a member of the Board of Directors of Memorial Health University Medical Center for over 10 years, where he previously served as chief of gastroenterology. During his career, Dr. Murphy has served in many leadership positions in the medical community, including President of the Georgia Medical Society.
In addition to participating in a number of clinical research trials, Dr. Murphy has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and is a frequent presenter at conferences. He has also authored chapters in textbooks of Gastroenterology (Yamada) and Internal Medicine (Noble) and written chapters in the E-Medicine online medical textbook. Dr. Murphy has been named to “America’s Top Doctors” list every year for over a decade and has been chosen as Savannah’s “Best Gastroenterologist” five years in a row by the readers of Savannah magazine.
In addition to his medical career, Dr. Murphy is active in the community and has served on the Board of Directors and president of the Savannah Book Festival. He also serves on the Board of Advisors for the University of Georgia’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. With a lifelong interest in creative writing, Dr. Murphy has written over 200 op-ed columns for the Savannah Morning News and received the “Best Columnist” award by the readers of Savannah magazine. His work has been widely published, including several short stories and two critically acclaimed novels, The Shadow Man and The Curse of the Thrax, which was chosen as a First Place Award winner in the Dante Rossetti Young Adult Fiction competition.
In addition to general gastroenterology, Dr. Murphy’s principal clinical interests include Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, liver disease, gastrointestinal malignancy and advanced therapeutic endoscopy. He founded the Center for Digestive and Liver Health with Dr. Rydzak in 1994.
