Penn Medicine News Blog

Every moment counts for brain diseases. The saying among medical experts is that “time is brain.” The earlier you receive treatment, the better. This week, a diverse team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is in New Orleans at the American Academy of Neurology’s 64th Annual Meeting, sharing the latest data aimed at enhancing the speed of diagnosis and treatment, and ultimately helping people with neurologic conditions.

This morning, Michael Mullen, MD, a fellow in Neurology and Vascular Medicine, started the day with a presentation showing that the emergence of primary stroke centers certified by The Joint Commission has steadily improved the treatment of stroke patients. Previous studies, from collaborations between Penn’s Departments of Emergency Medicine and Neurology, have shown that nearly half of Americans live more than an hour away from primary stroke centers and do not have ready access to the specialized stroke care they need when blood supply to their brain has been cut off. The data presented today provides evidence supporting the efficacy and importance of primary stroke centers.

To hospital patients in America, it may seem obvious that their care team – doctors, nurses, technicians, social workers and many other staff – works together to ensure they’re getting proper treatment and monitoring during their stay. But this relationship – often referred to as “interprofessionalism” – has not always been so obvious. Efforts are now under way across the nation to encourage it to flourish in all levels of medical education and hospital care and to foster it in a way that most benefits patients.

In 2010, the Institute of Medicine released a report called “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.” One recommendation: “Schools of nursing, in collaboration with other health professional schools, should design and implement early and continuous interprofessional collaboration through joint classroom and clinical training opportunities.”

This month, the keynote speaker at Penn’s second symposium on interprofessionalism agreed – but up to a point. Jordan Cohen, MD, former president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, spoke in favor of better understanding and cooperation among the health professions, but he argued that classroom settings were not the best sites for teaching interprofessionalism. He believes that simulation centers, where situations can more closely resemble real-life settings and standardized patients can be used, are more practical and more educational.

The Philadelphia Science Festival Carnival tents have all been folded and hauled away. There have already been four nights of non-stop science cafes at local watering holes. But, there are still six more days of the festival to go, and Penn Medicine faculty will be participating at events on most of those days.

Tonight, Tuesday, April 24, come hear about the The Great Vaccine Debate, 6:30 p.m., The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. For more than two centuries, vaccines have protected us against many of humankind’s deadliest diseases, prevented global epidemics, and saved countless lives. Yet, in recent years a debate has sprung up on the safety of vaccination, causing some parents to forgo vaccinating their children. This has led to the return of some diseases, such as whooping cough and measles, as we begin to lose our “herd” immunity. Hear the real scoop from a panel of vaccine scientists, medical ethicists, and Mark Largent, PhD, author of Vaccine: The Debate in Modern America. Jason Schwartz, associate fellow at the Penn Center for Bioethics, is a panelist.

Sometimes the world needs a superhero. On Wednesday, April 25, attend Science Super Heroes, 7:00 p.m., Chemical Heritage Foundation, 315 Chestnut Street, to meet a few Penn, Philadelphia University, and Temple scientists who are doing great things, from repairing oil spill damage to curing once-fatal diseases. Doug Smith, MD, director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair, is a panelist.

(from l to r: Sandra Kaplan, Jason Cohn, Harry Fisher, Kimberly Fisher, Hayley Fisher, Marion Leary, Jessica Dine, and Erin Sweeney)

Hailey is a five-year-old preschooler who loves Disney princesses, dolls, dressing up, Spongebob SquarePants and Mickey Mouse.  Hailey is also a voracious learner and is always asking questions. One of the top students in her class, Hailey is preparing for the next chapter of learning; her mother signed her up for kindergarten this week.

On Monday, April 23, Penn Medicine faculty will be particpating in three events at the Philadelphia Science Festival.

Start off with the science café Orphan Diseases: What Are They and Why Should We Care? at Rembrandt’s, 741 North 23rd Street at 6:30 PM. Hear firsthand the plight of a patient who fought to be diagnosed with an "orphan disease," and what some Philadelphia scientists are doing to help change the fate of the 30 million Americans with rare diseases. FOP expert Fred Kaplan, MD, Orthopedics, is part of the panel discussion in this event organized by the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

Also the Franklin Institute is hosting the public lecture Cancer and our Genome: Insight and Hope at 6:00 PM. This free event features Penn cancer experts Drs. Chi Van Dang, Katherine Nathanson, and Anil Rustgi, as well as Yael Mosse from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Ashani Weeraratna from the Wistar Institute. The discussion will be emceed by WHYY’s Taunya English and is organized by the Penn Genome Frontier Institute.

The Perelman School of Medicine, and other schools from around the University of Pennsylvania, has partnered with an innovative new learning platform to make Web-based courses, taught by some of the world’s foremost experts, available free to the general public.  The platform, Coursera, is the first to host content from multiple world-renowned universities (including Princeton University, Stanford University and the University of Michigan) at one online destination.

"We are delighted to participate in this innovative collaboration that will make high-quality learning opportunities available to millions of people around the world," said Gail Morrison, MD, senior vice dean for Education at the Perelman School of Medicine. "Expanding access to medical science and technology is an invaluable opportunity to better educate the public at large about the true art and science of medicine.”

The online courses include video lectures -- available to anyone, anywhere in the world, with an internet connection -- that feature interactive quizzes, mastery-building interactive assignments and collaborative online forums. Beginning in June, Perelman School of Medicine faculty will provide courses on a variety of medical topics, from cardiac resuscitation to neuroscience.

It's less than a week away! The Festival, a citywide collaboration showcasing science and technology every April, will run from April 20-29. Penn students, staff, and faculty will be participating in all kinds of events throughout the entire festival. For the next two weeks, watch this news blog and Penn Medicine on Twitter and Facebook for detailed information on individual Penn events.

To start, on the first night of the Festival, Friday, April 20, Ben Stanger, a Penn cancer biologist who studies tissue regeneration, and amphibian biologist Carlos Martinez Rivera from the Philadelphia Zoo, will be part of a science café called Bringing Up Baby at 6:30pm at Rembrandts restaurant, 741 North 23rd Street. It’s free! No registration, so just show up!

The speakers will explore what all animal life on our planet – starting out as a single cell, the product of a sperm and an egg – has in common. They will guide the audience through the amazing set of events that led each one of us to be here, viewed from the worlds of molecular biology, cell biology, and zoology, with a Q&A session to follow.

The top 'Biggest Loser' team (l. to r.) Jen Naji, Kellie Barnes, Tyesha Godwin and Teel Summer. Not pictured: Jen Perno.

In keeping with Penn Medicine’s focus on improving the health of both our patients and employees, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Nursing Renewal – an on-site  place for staff to relax and re-energize -- decided to run a ‘Biggest Loser’ competition for charity. More than 200 staff members participated in the three-month team challenge and, in the final weigh-in, they lost a total of more than 435 pounds. Their loss meant an impressive gain for a charitable organization, as well, through donation of the money participants paid to be part of the competition.

On March 27, 2012, 20 nurses from the Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI) in Tanzania graduated from the first ever OncoLink Cancer Nurse Education Program, a pilot program started in February 2011 that aims to provide oncology nursing training in via e-learning courses. The program was created by oncology nursing experts at OncoLink®, a free cancer information website developed by experts at the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center.

The first graduating class from the OncoLink Cancer Nurse Education Program

With a population of nearly 40 million, Tanzania lies on the east coast of Africa between Kenya and Mozambique. The country sees roughly 21,000 newly registered cancer cases annually, of which more than half result in death. Located in the main coastal city of Dar es Salaam, ORCI is the only specialized center for cancer treatment in Tanzania. It provides both diagnostic and treatment services for cancer patients from all regions in Tanzania as well as other eastern and southern African countries. Of the 21,000 new cancer cases each year, only 10 percent reach ORCI. Of these, 75 percent to 80 percent are already in advanced stages, and, at the rate the number of cancer cases is increasing, cancer will likely be the dominant health issue in Africa for decades to come.

“We first learned about the cancer population in Tanzania and the ORCI at the African Organization for research and Training in Cancer’s (AORTIC) International Cancer Conference,” said James Metz, MD, associate professor and vice chair of clinical operations in the department of Radiation Oncology at the Perelman School of Medicine, who serves as editor-in-chief of OncoLink. “As we learned more about ORCI, we realized that there was this huge patient population, but the health care providers had this major dichotomy in the resources available. The nurses, for example, are an incredibly passionate group of people who are dedicated to their professions, but the education in oncology was almost non-existent. Additionally, though the ORCI had relationships with various organizations and received much of their technology from donations, they were lacking some of the most basic elements to provide quality care.”

Approximately 12 million Americans are seen in U.S. emergency departments each year for mental health-related symptoms. Of those patients, around 650,000 are evaluated for suicide attempts. For many of these people, it’s a frightening stop on the long and painful road of suffering that results from depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.

The usual care for these suicidal patients seen in the ED and other emergency settings is to assess their level of risk in terms of how likely they are to actually harm themselves and then refer them to the appropriate level of care. Typically, when suicidal patients are evaluated in the ED and hospitalization is not determined to be necessary, they are provided with information for outpatient mental health treatment and sent home. But that approach doesn’t necessarily meet the needs of patients or their physicians, who may worry about discharging patients in the midst of a crisis.

“This  ‘assess and refer’ approach can be disconcerting to patients and their families,” says Gregory K. Brown, PhD, research associate professor of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine. “It can also leave clinicians feeling like they didn’t do enough due to the dire consequences associated with suicidal thoughts in patients.”