A Year in ReviewPATIENTSBone marrow transplant recipient Penny Smith met the stranger who made the difference between life and death. Vanessa Hill, a local TV news anchor at the time, arranged the flight for Smith’s marrow donor, Andrea Fosse, from Coesfeld, Germany, to Charleston so the two could meet. Smith was the first person in the United States to undergo a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated individual and complete follow up as an outpatient. Treatment for osteopetrosis at the MUSC General Clinical Research Center has extended the life of Sijia, a child from south China. Her uncle’s plea by e-mail caught the attention of a number of compassionate Lowcountry people. Sijia’s care has been in the hands of L. Lyndon Key, M.D., director of pediatric endocrinology. A model program to make the forensic and medical exam for rape victims
less anxiety-provoking and more standardized is implemented at MUSC.
PUBLIC SAFETY
The new year brought a new look to MUSC’s Public Safety Department, as officers donned redesigned award winning uniforms and drove newly marked vehicles. The changes reflect a community-oriented image for the department which seeks to promote service with safety from crime. The Department of Public Safety was tapped for accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc. (CALEA). MUSC received accreditation with 69 other national agencies at a ceremony in Atlanta. Of the country’s 17,000 police agencies, only about 500 have attained accreditation status. CLINICAL
Three MUSC physicians were named among the 318 Top Cancer Specialists for Women in the March issue of Good Housekeeping Magazine. MUSC Medical Center received the National Research Corporation’s (NRC) 1999 Consumer Choice Award for the Charleston metropolitan statistical area. The NRC is the nation’s leading health care performance measurement firm. It has bestowed this award on hospitals which consumers prefer in their individual markets. For the first time in South Carolina, an MUSC physician induced what can be likened to a carefully controlled heart attack to treat a patient’s life-threatening heart condition. He used a catheterization procedure to destroy portions of thickened muscles in a patient’s heart. The thickened muscle obstructed blood flow to vital organs and caused a fluid build-up in her lungs. A new device to help prostate surgeons avoid cutting the nerves near
the prostate is now being used at MUSC along with several other major academic
medical centers.
MUSC’s Kidney Stone Center employs a powerful and accurate laser, called Holmium, to destroy kidney stones. Symptoms for kidney stones have been described as excruciating and unbearable—the worst pain imaginable. The problem is diagnosed and treated in more than a million men and women each year. CARE resource nurses have made it their role to promote the most effective relief strategies to prevent or alleviate unnecessary pain for children. These selected registered nurses are members of the Children’s Analgesia, Research and Education (CARE) pain management team. When protocols restricted the amount of time residents could spend in the neonatal intensive care unit, certified advanced practice nurse professionals met MUSC neonatologists’ need for competent assistance. The nurse practitioner has expanded nursing and unburdened overworked doctors nationwide. Stereotactic radiosurgery at MUSC has been updated to bring advanced flexibility, precision and safety to the treatment of certain brain, head and neck tumors. RESEARCH
Cancer research at MUSC received a huge boost with a five-year, $6.6 million program project grant and a number of other federal grants to boost the Center for Molecular and Structural Biology’s cancer genome project. The project seeks to determine the molecular basis of cancer and thereby target a select group of the most significant cancer-related genes for the development of innovative cancer therapy. Single-use electrophysiology catheters, used to detect and treat heart arrhythmias, have been found to be safe and functional for re-use following thorough cleaning, sterilization and inspection, according to an MUSC study accepted for presentation at an American Heart Association annual meeting. The catheter re-use cuts costs that are passed on in savings to patients. Researchers have found that cooling the brain of an asphyxiated animal can slow or temporarily arrest the cell death process and allow the cells to gather resources they need to stay alive. An MUSC study will determine whether moderate hypothermia can decrease brain injury in asphyxiated newborn infants. A new collaborative agreement between MUSC and a major Japanese research and development pharmaceutical company has the potential for relieving a wide range of afflictions, including allergies, asthma, rheumatic diseases and Alzheimer’s disease. The Konishi-MUSC Institute for Inflammation research was established with a $3 million grant from Nippon Zoki Pharmaceutical Company. EDUCATION
The nation’s first doctoral program in executive management and leadership for executive level leaders in health service organizations graduated its first class of 17 students representing 11 states. Distance education at MUSC is beyond its infancy stage and enjoying a growth of Internet- and video conferencing-based courses. So much so that the MUSC Board of Trustees approved 10 new distance education policies covering everything from facility use to room rental fees. Medical, dental, nursing, pharmacy, and physical and occupational therapy students at MUSC are all bound for jobs in settings that increasingly demand teamwork. To prepare, they are learning to work together. Although students still do the bulk of their course work within their own professional schools, they come together for practicums, clinics and some seminar-style classes. Dr. Ray Greenberg, vice president for academic affairs and provost, was selected by the MUSC Board of Trustees to serve as president beginning in January. “No one in that room was more surprised than I,” he said upon hearing of the Board's decision. The South Carolina Rural Interdisciplinary Program of Training (SCRIPT) offers eligible students two five-week 40-hours-per-week rural practicums for spring and summer sessions in 2000. Two patient education channels are available on hospital room television sets at MUSC, one for children and one for adults. Children and adult health topics are available in both the Children’s Hospital rooms and the main hospital rooms. Only children’s topics are available in the Children’s Hospital. Patient education videos are also available on topics of interest, should they be missed when they are broadcast. MUSC’s Mini-Med School features a variety of health education topics delivered by some of South Carolina’s top medical specialists and world-class researchers. Targeted to both young and old audiences, the educational outreach serves the Lowcountry with the best talent and expertise MUSC has to offer. Formal web-based College of Health Professions classes on the Internet
eliminate distance and demonstrates how MUSC can become accessible to the
world. Also, the Internet classes present students and teacher with options
that can enhance the learning process.
TECHNOLOGY
Its high-tech video-conferencing room built adjacent to procedure rooms will usher the MUSC Digestive Disease Center into the next century with world-wide distance learning, teleconsulting and research collaboration. The video networking system allows the DDC to provide a high-quality teaching environment to visiting delegates or colleagues linking electronically from around the world. Electronic order entry, a component of the Emerald Project, MUSC’s electronic
medical record system was activated on 10-West in the hospital. It was
the first step in a comprehensive process to automate the complex and crucial
activity of incorporating physician orders in the Oacis patient care system.
Oacis, MUSC’s new clinical information system, is a central component of the university’s electronic medical record project. Though each clinical environment has its specific needs for which computer programs are used, Oacis acts as a link to a single source for data from various hospital information systems. The last thing a patient in the Hollings Cancer Center wants to do is wait. HCC’s new patient pagers have at least made the inevitable wait more tolerable by allowing the patients to stroll the campus or visit the cafeteria instead of sitting idly in the center’s waiting area. Passport, the web portal that connects authorized clinicians by Internet to their patients’ records stored in Oacis at the MUSC Medical Center, met its first test and may have saved a life. Its first, but not its last. An oncologist accessed a patient’s records from the Bahamas and e-mailed them to a physician treating the patient in Myrtle Beach. A Clinical and Patient Education Website <http://www.muschealth.com> opened and is available, listing staff and patient education classes in such topics as advanced cardiac life support, basic cardiac life support, chemotherapy, conscious sedation, critical care, central venous lines, etc. The Ophthalmology Department uses pocket computers, programmed by one
of its residents, to fit the record-keeping needs of residents at the Storm
Eye Institute. The increased accuracy in record-keeping serves patients,
residents and the department in maintaining its accreditation.
CAMPUS
MUSC closed out the year $70,000 richer by disposing of more than a million pounds of recycled materials. The College of Nursing spent most of the year with its 50-year-old building in disrepair as workmen removed old electrical and heating and cooling systems to refit it with newer, more efficient equipment. About 160 animals weathered a near-miss hurricane in MUSC’s temporary pet shelter. The shelter allowed MUSC employees who were needed at the hospital during the storm to attend to their animals while at work. CLINICAL OUTREACH
A 40-foot Mobile Health Unit is traveling coastal South Carolina’s back roads to offer cancer screening, cancer prevention, and general health education and counseling to the medically underserved. The MUSC Children’s Heart Program of South Carolina has installed a fully interactive telemedicine system at Self Memorial Hospital in Greenwood. The system allows pediatric oncologists at MUSC to examine, diagnose and recommend whether to transport an infant with a suspected serious heart defect to Charleston, all from more than 200 miles away. MUSC’s new director of pediatric cardiology is taking the quality cardiac care and research he directs here to children throughout South Carolina through the S.C. Children’s Heart Program. J. Philip Saul, M.D., wants to focus on interventional techniques and clinical services in all areas of pediatric cardiology—surgery, catheterization, electrophysiology, echocardiography and intensive care. |