Dr. Gardner is an Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, Chattanooga. After growing up in north central Georgia, he obtained his medical degree at the Medical University of South Carolina followed by orthopaedic residency at Michigan State in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During his residency, Dr. Gardner was drawn to the complexity of trauma which led him to pursue an orthopaedic trauma fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Gardner then joined UT Erlanger where he has practiced orthopaedic trauma surgery since 2010, along with Drs. Kiner and Nowotarski. Together their team comprises the only three fracture specialists within a hundred-mile radius of Chattanooga, at the region's only Level One Trauma Center. 

Dr. Gardner's clinical interests include the treatment of pelvic and acetabular fractures, complex extremity fractures, and open fractures (broken bones protruding through the skin), as well as the treatment of malunions (bones that have healed crooked) and nonunions (broken bones that fail to heal). In addition to patient care, his research interests include finding ways to obtain bone graft for unhealed bones with less pain for the patient, identifying patients with femur (thigh bone) fractures that are also at risk for hip fractures, and new methods to reduce blood loss and minimize infection risk with fracture surgery.

Dr. Gardner is Board Certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery, and is an active member in multiple medical societies including the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Orthopaedic Trauma Association, Vanderbilt Orthopaedic Society and Tennessee Orthopaedic Society. In addition, he is a faculty member of the AO Trauma international organization of Orthopaedic Trauma surgeons, providing fracture education to future orthopaedic surgeons.