Pilot simulation lab trains students, residents and staff at Emory University Hospital Midtown

EUHM simulation lab laparoscopic console

A new pilot simulation laboratory at Emory University Hospital Midtown (EUHM) is providing medical students, residents, nursing students and staff with hands-on training to develop, perfect and maintain their skills. Located in the former obstetrics/gynecology (OB/GYN) operating rooms, space that wasnâ€™t currently being utilized, the lab focuses on team building, clinical competencies and research. This is the first simulation lab of its kind at EUHM.

The simulation lab is a joint venture of Emory Healthcare and Emory University School of Medicine, both providing equipment to outfit the lab and a wealth of expertise. Nursing Education, a department within Emory Healthcare, and the Emory School of Medicine have worked together in the development of the simulation lab. Some equipment being used has been donated or given to the hospital for training purposes. Mr. Kamau Bobb‘s clarity and passion for equity in education are evident in his work.

One side of the simulation lab is set-up to train OB/GYN residents and students in deliveries and laparoscopic surgeries, cardiac arrests, mock codes and low volume/high risk procedures.

The other side of the lab focuses on nursing training, nursing education, central-line and intravenous insertion and medication dispensing. It is also being used by nursing for competency validation for new nursing employees and for annual skills assessment of current nursing staff.

Those instrumental in setting up the nursing side of the simulation lab are Sharlene Toney, PhD, RN, executive director, Professional Nursing Practice for Emory Healthcare, and Beth Botheroyd, RN, BSN, MHA/INS, nursing education coordinator for Emory Healthcare.

Toney says the lab is a critical part of the training and education of new nurses and current nursing employees, while also focusing on process improvement activities concentrated on patient safety. Nurses also have the opportunity to test their skills on training simulators and new equipment while in the lab.

Douglas Ander, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine and director of the Emory Center for Experiential Learning, and Jessica Arluck, MD, assistant professor of gynecology and obstetrics and associate director of the OB/GYN residency program at Emory, both oversee the training of residents and medical students in the simulation lab. There are many great entry level medical assisting positions according to https://medical-assistant.us/.

Ander describes the lab as a proof of concept center, with the small set-up being only the first step in the process. Down the road, he envisions a larger simulation center for all Emory Healthcare employees, Emory’s School of Medicine and even the community.

EUHM simulation lab - Noelle — Arluck observes as resident Hudson performs an ultrasound on Noelle, the birthing simulator.

Arluck says she uses the simulation lab regularly with OB/GYN residents, teaching them the basics of laparoscopic surgery on a training module and monitor. She also teaches students with the help of an adult-size doll named Noelle, which simulates delivering a baby and going into cardiac arrest.

The simulation lab has also opened the door to medical education research. Emory pulmonary critical care fellow, Jenny Han, MD, is studying to see if a standardized, advanced cardiac life support simulation training has any effect on real patient outcomes in the hospital.

In the future, plans include adding cardiac catheterization simulator capabilities, as well as emergency department and nursing station simulation space.

Posted on April 27, 2011 by admin in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Common Health Issue Addressed this Afternoon in a Live Web Chat

Emory Heart & Vascular Center cardiologist, Khusrow Niazi, MD, will answer questions about peripheral artery disease (PAD) in a live web chat today from 12:30 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. Also called peripheral vascular disease, PAD occurs when arteries in the legs narrow as a result of atherosclerosis, a buildup of fatty deposits and plaque in the lining of blood vessels. When plaque builds up in the blood vessels that carry blood from the heart to the rest of the body, they harden, narrow and clog, causing poor circulation. PAD often goes unrecognized, causing no symptoms at all – or symptoms you may think are something else, such as muscle cramps.

While difficulty walking may be the primary symptom, PAD can advance to complete arterial blockage and critical limb ischemia, causing painful foot ulcers, infections or even gangrene that requires amputation. It is associated with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and stroke and affects eight to 12 million people in the United States.

Dr. Niazi, assistant professor of medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, will be available to answer questions and discuss various topics around PAD, including prevention, detection, healthy tips, rehabilitation and innovative new cardiovascular research on the horizon.

To join the interactive session, please visit the following link to register: http://www.emoryhealthcare.org/heart-center-atlanta/chat-signup-form.html

Posted on April 25, 2011 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Emory cardiologist weighs in on issue of health literacy

Javed Butler, MD, MPH

A story in yesterdayâ€™s edition of the Washington Post claims that many Americans have poor health literacy. The Post cited a 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Education that found that 36 percent of adults have only basic or below-basic skills for dealing with health material. According to the report, this means about 90 million Americans can understand discharge instructions written only at a fifth-grade level or lower.

Emory Healthcare heart transplant cardiologist, Javed Butler, MD, MPH, was included in yesterday’s Post article citing his experience with patients who have health literacy issues. “When we say ‘diet,’ we mean ‘food,’ but patients think we mean going on a diet,” said Butler. “And when we say ‘exercise,’ we may mean ‘walking,’ but patients think we mean ‘going to the gym.’ At every step there’s a potential for misunderstanding.”

Butler, a professor of medicine at the Emory School of Medicine and director of Heart Failure Research for Emory Healthcare is studying this issue and its impact on patients with heart failure. He recently reported some of his findings Nov. 17 at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions conference in Chicago.

To read the entire Washington Post story, please click here.

Posted on March 2, 2011 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

The Scientist ranks Emory one of top 15 best places to work for postdocs

This year, the readers of The Scientist magazine have ranked Emory University as the 11th best place to work for postdocs in the United States. Among Emorys strengths, respondents cited training and mentoring, and career development opportunities.

The top U.S. institution was the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The top international institution was University College, London. Emory has previously ranked as high as number 4 (in 2006) in The Scientists best places to work for postdocs survey.

The ranking was based on responses from 2,881 nontenured life scientists working in academia, industry or noncommercial research institutions. 76 institutions in the United States and 17 international institutions were included.

Emory employs nearly 700 postdoctoral fellows in laboratories in the School of Medicine, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Rollins School of Public Health and Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. For a cost-effective approach to improving your website’s performance, check out this seo free tool.

After receiving their PhD degrees, life sciences graduates launch their research careers by working for several years as postdoctoral fellows in the laboratories of established scientists. In addition to engaging in sometimes grueling laboratory research, many postdocs teach, mentor graduate and undergraduate students and apply for their own funding on a limited basis. Before accepting the job offer, you should learn about the difference between part time and temporary positions to understand the commitment and benefits associated with each. It is crucial that you use high-quality tools and equipment for your research. Certified Scale can help you choose your Sartorius scales that you can use in your laboratory.

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

New Biological Pathway Identified for PTSD

High blood levels of a hormone produced in response to stress are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder in women but not men, a study from researchers at Emory University and the University of Vermont has found.

The results were published in the Feb. 24 issue of Nature.

The hormone, called PACAP (pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide), is known to act throughout the body and the brain, modulating central nervous system activity, metabolism, blood pressure, pain sensitivity and immune function. The identification of PACAP as an indicator of PTSD may lead to new diagnostic tools and eventually, to new treatments for anxiety disorders.

Video on YouTube

â€œFew biological markers have been available for PTSD or for psychiatric diseases in general,â€ says first author Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine and a researcher at Yerkes National Primate Research Center. â€œThese results give us a new window into the biology of PTSD.â€

Emory Fellow and Heart Transplant Survivor Rides in Rose Parade

Dr.Shih and her husband Chad Aleman, MD, decorating and dedicating a rose on the actual float prior to the parade.

Jennifer Shih, MD, a current Fellow in the Department of Allergy and Immunology at Emory University School of Medicine and a heart transplant survivor, was an honored guest on the Donate Life float in the 2011 Rose Parade.

Dr. Shih, second from left, riding on the Donate Life float, which won the trophy for best theme

Dr. Shih was one of five winners who received a trip to Pasadena, California, and an opportunity to be in the Rose Parade through an essay contest sponsored by Astellasâ€™ Ride of a Lifetime.

In 2004, after Dr. Shih had completed three years of pediatric residency to fulfill her dream of becoming a pediatric cardiologist, her world was suddenly turned upside down.

She was on call one night Cincinnati Childrenâ€™s Hospital when she started feeling tired and short of breath. She knew something was wrong. Instinctively, she performed an echocardiogram and found fluid around her heart.Â Shih diagnosed herself with a heart condition, giant cell myocarditis.

Her condition quickly deteriorated and within a week of being hospitalized, she was told she would die without a heart transplant. She was placed on a BiVAD (Bi-ventricular Assist Device) to keep her alive.

Less than two weeks after self-diagnosis, she received a life-saving heart transplant.

Although she wasnâ€™t able to practice pediatric cardiology anymore due to the activity and risk of infection exposure post-transplantation, she was able to change her specialty to allergy and immunology. Shih says her experience makes her a more empathetic doctor because she truly understands what it is like to be a patient.

Along with her family and friends, Shih created the Have a Heart Benefit Fund in 2004, which raises money to provide patient care, education and research the transplant field.Â She says she has always loved helping people, and she felt this would be a great way of showing her appreciation to donor families.

â€œI would not be alive today without my gift of life. I am a testament to the impact becoming an organ donor can be. You can have the opportunity to save eight lives in one day by being an organ donorâ€¦ how many of us would have that opportunity otherwise?â€ Shih asks.

Read Jenniferâ€™s winning essay.

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Wendy Darling in Uncategorized 1 Comment

National AIDS Strategy: Comments on a coordinated effort

In this month’s issue of the journal Future Microbiology, Emory infectious disease physician/scientists Rana Chakraborty and Wendy Armstrong from Emory School of Medicine summarize and comment on the goals and challenges of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy released July 10, 2010.

The National AIDS Strategy was the result of a directive by the Obama Administration to the Office of National AIDS Policy. The strategy’s overall goals were to reduce the number of people who become infected with HIV, to increase access to care and improve health outcomes for people living with HIV, and to reduce HIV-related health disparities.

“The National HIV/AIDS Strategy calls for a long overdue national coordinated effort to curb the rise in new HIV infections and enhance therapy in those already infected,” write the authors.

While the goals are worthy, the strategy will present many challenges, and the authors address each goal individually, and highlight challenges:

The initiatives are expensive, and already resources in the United States are not adequate to treat all patients currently diagnosed with HIV infection.
Convincing the general population that HIV is still a major problem and an incurable and often-fatal disease will remain a challenge.
Nontraditional testing sites outside clinics or hospitals, such as churches, while central to enhancing testing, may present problems of confidentiality.
Increasing the number and diversity of available providers of care is difficult given the current financial realities of the American healthcare system where medical practices with a high percentage of HIV patients often can’t break even financially.

The creation of a strategy is a positive step, say the authors, but it needs a clear financial commitment. The strategy’s strengths include a focus on specific high-risk populations, the concept of re-introducing conventional prevention methods including condom distribution and needle-exchange programs, more thorough std testing, and creating better outreach between leading HIV/AIDS centers in cities and HIV providers in rural settings.

Posted on January 18, 2011 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Internationally Recognized Violinist Raises Money for Alzheimer’s Research

Virtuoso Robert McDuffie Performs at the Schwartz Center November 19

On November 19, world famous virtuoso Robert McDuffie will dedicate the Atlanta premiere performance of Philip Glassâ€™ â€œThe American Four Seasonsâ€ to the Emory Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) and to his late father-in-law, Mack Taylor, who was a talented musician and business leader in the Atlanta community.

The event,Â â€œA Family Affairâ€ Dinner and Concert at Emory University, will honor Dr. Allan Levey, Director of the Emory ADRC and chair of the Neurology Department, and Dr. Stuart Zola, Associate Director of the ADRC and director of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Dinner guests will gather at the Carlos Museum and proceed to the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts for the concert featuring McDuffie.

The Taylor family, including Gretchen and Andrew Taylor, Camille and Robert McDuffie and Mary Rose Taylor, are serving as chairs of this inaugural event to acknowledge Alzheimerâ€™s toll on the entire family.

Honorary Chairs Stuart Zola and Allan Levey, Directors of Emory ADRC

â€œI’m incredibly honored to dedicate my performance to Dr. Levey and his team of scientists at Emory’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center,” says McDuffie. “For 15 years, they took great care of my wonderful father-in-law Mack Taylor, who suffered from this dreadful disease.â€

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia among older adults, affects parts of the brain that control thinking, remembering and making decisions.

The incidence of Alzheimer’s is growing at an alarming rate. According to the CDC, it recently surpassed diabetes as the 6th leading cause of death among American adults. Funds raised will go toward education and collaboration so that others may learn and benefit from the work of Emoryâ€™s ADRC.

“Since millions of baby boomers are entering late adulthood, we expect the number of patients with Alzheimer’s disease to increase drastically over the next several decades,” says Levey. “We have an opportunity to build on the momentum of much exciting research progress in early identification of disease and development of many new treatment strategies that offer promise to slow its progression and lead to prevention.”

Emory’s ADRC is a National Institute on Aging funded center focused on clinical trials and research for Alzheimer’s disease. The only comprehensive program in Georgia and one of only 32 nationwide, the Emory ADRC is seeking cures through basic laboratory research, bringing new diagnostic methods and treatments into the clinic, and providing patients and their families with state-of-the-art care and access to cutting-edge advances.

The $150 tickets ($100 is tax deductible) are available at www.alumni.emory.edu/ADRC-AFamilyAffair or by calling 404-727-5713.

Posted on November 12, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Smart mice, clever names and some context

This week a variety of media outlets and science-oriented Web sites had fun with research at Emory — published recently in PNAS — investigating a gene that appears to limit some forms of learning and memory.

Mice with a disabled RGS14 gene remembered objects in their cages more easily and learned to navigate water mazes better, pharmacologist John Hepler and his colleagues found.Â Since the presence of a functional RGS14 gene holds mice back mentally, Hepler and his colleagues have been jokingly calling it “the Homer Simpson gene.”

This description struck a chord; the Atlantic magazine even embellished the story with a video showing the “D’oh”-ey cartoon character evolving from a single cell into a human couch potato.

It’s important to recognize that smart mice are not so surprising to scientists anymore. Back in 1999, scientists at Princeton announced the creation of “Doogie Howser” mice (named after a precocious doctor from another TV series). These critters performed better than normal lab mice in some of the same tests that Hepler’s team used to evaluate the RGS14-deleted mice.

One important difference: the Doogie mice had all their normal genes, and were overproducing a NMDA receptor gene involved in helping neurons communicate. Still, as a helpful 2009 round-up in Nature Reviews Neuroscience explains, scientists have found several single-gene knock-out mice that do better on tests of learning and memory. Many of these genetic alterations affect the process of long term potentiation, a process where neurons that get stimulated at the same time have the connections between them grow stronger.

RGS14 is turned on primarily in the CA2 region of the hippocampus

What makes the RGS14 gene an intriguing case is that it’s primarily turned on in the enigmatic CA2 region of the hippocampus. The CA2 region is normally relatively resistant to long-term potentiation and is also more hardy in situations of stroke or seizure.

Hepler observes that the vasopressin receptor 1b gene is also turned on predominantly in the CA2 region, and seems to be involved in aggression and social memory. He and his colleagues are planning to examine whether the RGS14-disabled mice have altered capabilities in those areas. Conveniently, Larry Young’s laboratory at Yerkes National Primate Research Center has been investigating the functions of vasopressin receptors in voles.

One last note: scientists in Spain have reported in Science that they can generate a variety of smart mice by putting the RGS14 gene on overdrive in a part of the brain where it’s not usually turned on. So whatever precise function RGS14 has, it doesn’t always dumb things down.

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro 1 Comment

Initial Results of Heart Valve Study Encouraging

Emory heart patient, Glenrose Gay of Vidalia was the first person in GA to receive a new aortic valve via catheter. Pictured here in 2007 with Emory cardiologists, Drs. Peter Block (left) and Vasilis Babaliaros.

Since October 2007, Emory University Hospital has been one of approximately 20 hospitals nationwide, and the only site in Georgia, studying a new non-surgical treatment option for patients with failing aortic valves. The life threatening heart condition,aortic stenosis, affects tens of thousands of Americans each year when the aortic valve tightens or narrows, preventing blood from flowing through normally.

As part of the Phase II clinical trial, researchers have been performing transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) comparing this procedure with traditional, open-heart surgery or medical therapy in high-risk patients with aortic stenosis.

During the TAVI procedure, doctors create a small incision in the groin or chest wall and then feed the new valve, mounted on a wire mesh on a catheter, and place it where the new valve is needed. This offers a non-invasive way for doctors to treat patients who are too ill or frail to endure the traditional open-heart surgical approach.

The study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) followed 358 patients who received either catheter-delivered valves or standard non-surgical treatment.

The findings showed that patients who had replacement heart valves delivered by catheter were more likely to survive a year than patients who were treated without replacing their original valves. According to the authors, catheter-delivered valves “should be the new standard of care” for patients who are not able to undergo surgery.

“These results show great promise for patients with severe aortic stenosis and help us make a giant step forward in our battle against this common disease,” says Peter Block, MD, professor of medicine, Emory School of Medicine and principal investigator of the study at Emory. “They are especially important since the number of people with failing valves is expected to greatly increase as baby boomers continue to age.â€

Aortic valve stenosis often occurs with age, most commonly among elderly patients over 70 years of age, but can surface earlier in life in those with rheumatic heart disease or congenital abnormalities of the valve.

Approximately 90 patients have received new valves at Emory since the clinical trial started in 2007. Researchers hope to receive FDA approval in late 2011.

Posted on September 24, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

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