Penn Medicine News Blog Archive: In the News

To celebrate American Heart Month, the News Blog is highlighting some of the latest heart-centric news and stories from all parts of Penn Medicine. Just in time for the start of American Heart Month, Penn Medicine kicked off the MyHeartMap Challenge yesterday. For the first time, the wisdom of the...

This month, the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania united with First Lady Michelle Obama and more than 100 other members of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to improve the health and wellness of military service members and their families as part of the new...

520 days ago, in June 2010, a team of six astronauts embarked on a simulated Mars mission, conducted by the State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation – Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. On November 4, 2011, the hatch was opened in Russia and...

If you wind up going to the hospital to get a tattoo, you're not the only person to be surprised by the intersection of art and medicine. We're very fortunate at Penn to have a skilled tattoo artist who specializes in 3D nipple tattoos along with tattoos for scar camouflage or cosmetic purposes - Mandy Sauler, a micropigmentation specialist in Penn's Plastic Surgery Division.

Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of the Center for Bioethics in the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, last week challenged Michele Bachmann to produce evidence to back up her televised claims that the HPV vaccine – which prevents the strains of the virus that cause cervical cancer -- has "very dangerous consequences" including causing “mental retardation.”

UPDATE: Sunday, August 28, 2011 10:15 AM EDT As Hurricane Irene pulls away from the Philadelphia region, Penn Medicine's facilities - the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Hospital, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse - report no disruption of service to our patients. We had...

Experts from the Penn Memory Center are back from the 2011 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, held in Paris, where they presented new data and discussed the ongoing challenges in Alzheimer’s diagnosis, treatment and care and some of the ethical struggles associated with newly developed tests to predict and diagnose the disease.

Within hours of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' announcement that they planned to use a group of "mystery shoppers" to study access to primary care across the country, outcry erupted among physicians who felt the study was deceptive and unfair. "Snooping," some called it. A poor use of tax dollars, others said. Days later, the department announced they were putting the effort, which would have surveyed more than 4,000 physicians in nine states, on hold. This week in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Karin Rhodes, an emergency physician and health care policy researcher here at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine -- herself an expert in studies designed using the "secret shopper" method -- responds to the outcry in a "Perspective" piece aimed at taking the so-called "mystery" out of these studies.

In a third post documenting her trip with the Botswana-UPenn Partnership, Hayley Goldbach details her busy schedule in Bots! Week 1 Update Hayley Goldbach Apologies for my radio silence as I adjusted to life here in Bots. Part of it is that I have so much to say that the...

This summer, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania student Hayley Goldbach will travel to Botswana as part of the Botswana-UPenn Partnership to study dermatology and women’s health. The program that Hayley is participating in was formed by the Government of Botswana, the University of Botswana, and the...

In her final post to the graduation blog, the newly minted Dr. Jenny Rowland describes her graduation experience and shares what's next for her as she continues her travels down the path to becoming a physician healer. Congratulations Dr. Rowland...we'll be here waiting for your return. The Road Still Ahead...

In her second post to the blog, as the day of graduation approaches, medical student Jenny Rowland ruminates on when she will officially be a "doctor" and her journey to adding "MD" after her name. The Moment of Graduation Jenny Rowland My six-year-old just asked me, “Mom- when do you...

On May 15, 2011, 147 students will embark on their careers as doctors as they graduate from the School of Medicine. Not only will it be a memorable milestone for the students, but also for the School of Medicine itself. This year’s graduation ceremony will serve as the final commencement...

In pursuit of a cure, cancer patients must turn their bodies over to doctors, nurses and family caregivers. But the human touches that are ultimately meant to be healing – needle sticks for placement of chemotherapy lines and blood samples, positioning on the table for radiation treatments and imaging tests, and countless physical exams – often feel anything but soothing. The Beauty of Healing, a new salon-based program for women dealing with cancer that is helping patients at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center, aims to inject a unique type of TLC into cancer care.

A genetic mistake that arose thousands of years ago spares rare HIV-infected individuals the ravages of AIDS. Researchers at Penn’s School of Medicine are in the midst of translating the language of ancient genetic mistakes into today’s cures.

HUP's Nursing Patient Safety Unit is a simulation set up to highlight common hospital safety issues and errors, sort of like the medical error version of the "What's Wrong?" pictures on the back of Highlights magazine for kids.

Penn Medicine kicked off Patient Safety Awareness Week today, with a plethora of activities and training initiatives designed to get our staff members talking about and learning more about something that’s at the heart of our work here: Keeping patients safe while they’re in our hospitals.

When news about a practice-changing breast cancer study hit earlier this month following its publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association, newly diagnosed breast cancer patients at Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center had questions. Many of the patients who called or brought up the study during their appointments in the days afterward had seen news stories about the study and were confused. Did these findings apply to them? Did they still need the surgery they had planned?

Zachary Meisel, an emergency physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who is also a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar, is Time.com's new "Medical Insider" columnist. A month into his new venture, he has taken on topics including the patient-directed "Google medicine" phenomenon, why abdominal pain is...

Physicians and scientists at Penn Medicine are combining the power of new diagnostic tools and advanced research to help patients learn about their cardiovascular health and prevent disease. This month – celebrated as American Heart Month by health professionals across the country – is the perfect time to highlight some...