Penn Medicine News Blog Archive: Patient Care

To show its gratitude to all laboratory professionals, the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine celebrated Medical Laboratory Professionals Week April 22-26, with a host of activities, such as Phillies Night, in appreciation of all the hard work and dedication of the hundreds of staff and faculty members working in more than 30 different laboratories across the Penn campus.

This year the Center for Brain Injury and Repair is reaching audiences of all stripes at the Philadelphia Science Festival, with their message of how to mind your brain from concussions with hand-on demos.

In early April, Penn Medicine hosted a fast-paced lightning round of presentations highlighting new and emerging technology being used inside and outside the Health System that may help patients and medical professionals alike. “Connected health” is about continuous sensing and monitoring to enable early detection, diagnosis and intervention, and improving outcomes at lower cost. Alternating between internal and external projects, the presenters brought their best ideas and applications to share, explaining how these new devices fit within the existing health care system and, in some cases, how they stretch the boundaries and may change the way healthcare is delivered.

Penn’s signature event at the 3rd annual Philadelphia Science Festival next week is a sure sign of the times. “Big Ideas: Funding and Innovation” draws on current themes and reminders of where the bright ideas really come from.

Women who develop breast cancer while they’re young are often searching for answers about the cause for their disease or what they can do to improve their chances of being cured. While an increasing number of large genetic testing panels promise to scrutinize their DNA to uncover clues, a team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine and the Abramson Cancer Center has found that those powerful tests tend to produce more questions than they answer.

Members of Rhoads 5 SICU, winners of the Gold Beacon Award Nurses make up the single largest segment of the health-care work force, providing 95 percent of direct care to hospitalized patients. So it’s not surprising that the higher the quality of a hospital’s nursing staff, the better the patient...

Last week, a fleet of community health workers fanned out to help patients in need of some extra support, as part of an ambitious new Penn Medicine program that brings relatable neighbors and peers on board to help vulnerable Penn Medicine patients navigate the medical system and address underlying causes of illness.

Penn Medicine has set a goal to eliminate preventable readmissions within seven days after patients are discharged from the hospital at its three hospitals by July 1, 2014. Since the kick-off of this effort in 2011, a number of initiatives have successfully reduced these readmissions but a key component in...

“The needs that call Penn Medicine to action in the community are profound. Twenty-five percent of Philadelphians live in poverty – that’s nearly 400,000 adults and children – and one in seven city residents have no health insurance. Hunger and homelessness remain, still, throughout the city. These societal problems only...

 To celebrate February as American Heart Month, the News Blog is highlighting some of the latest heart-centric news and stories from all areas of Penn Medicine. “I know this sounds like a cliché, but one of the main reasons I’m interested in learning about the genetic basis of heart...

To celebrate February as American Heart Month, the News Blog is highlighting some of the latest heart-centric news and stories from all areas of Penn Medicine. In honor of Heart Month and Valentine's Day, we're revisiting some of our most inspirational heart health patient stories from the last year. Penn...

The Pennsylvania HeartRescue Project, led by the Center for Resuscitation Science in Penn’s department of Emergency Medicine, has partnered with the American Heart Association and the Pennsylvania Bureau of Emergency Medical Services to form the “Lend A Hand, Save a Life” CPR Challenge, which launched last month and will continue through late May. The initiative aims to train 250,000 people across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Taking a look back, 2012 has been a year marked by breakthroughs in medical research, system-wide growth, and landmark philanthropic support for Penn Medicine. As we set our sights on the year ahead, we also celebrate the past year's accomplishments and give thanks to the outstanding faculty, staff, and students...

No one wants to be in the hospital, but being there during the holidays –- away from family and friends -– makes a difficult situation even harder. That’s why staff at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania go out of their way to bring the holiday spirit into patient...

Nathan Francis Mossell, MD, the first black student in Penn’s School of Medicine, received his medical degree in 1882. On his first day, he later wrote, he was “accompanied by a storm of protest” as his fellow incoming students sounded their displeasure. “I was not perturbed in the least,” wrote...

As a Digital Communications Editor, much — if not all — of my typical day is spent behind a keyboard in a regular office separate from our clinical facilities. For someone who is relatively new to Penn Medicine, this can create issues of scale. You’re told from the very beginning...

UCHCFrom providing screenings for high blood pressure in West Philadelphia barber shops to arming women who are recovering from addiction with the skills to build new lives with their children, Penn Medicine’s employees reach far beyond our campus community to help, care for, and inspire people to improve their health. Each year since 2007, Penn Medicine has highlighted the work of its faculty, staff and students in Philadelphia and its neighboring communities in Simply Because. Last year’s book is full of the faces and stories of everyone who comes together to be part of these programs.

Whether you indulged on Turkey Day, are watching your calories, or trying to avoid an annual weight gain during the holidays, Thanksgiving can be an important time to stay in control of your health. And the day after Thanksgiving can be a great opportunity to reinvest your energy and set...

Two recent multicenter studies by Penn Medicine researchers have explored some of the issues involved in helping patients understand how receiving a destination LVAD will impact end-of-life planning and what is needed from a destination LVAD patient’s caregiver.

Last month, I wrote a post in anticipation of starting the training necessary to become a volunteer with Penn Wissahickon Hospice. Since that time, I’ve completed training to become an inpatient hospice greeter and actually volunteered twice. Although it’s still very early on in my experience, I think I’ve gleaned a few insights that I wanted to share.