Archive for 2012

As a runner and as the associate director of community engagement at OHSU, I couldn’t ask for a greater opportunity to share OHSU’s commitment to health and community than the half marathon announced last week by the creators of the iconic Hood to Coast Relay. It’s going to be a fantastic run on a beautiful course–and it’s going to help advance OHSU’s mission of teaching, healing and discovery. OHSU is going to join with the … Read More

Written by Ames Elliot, M.P.H. Two words strike fear into the heart of every person who goes to the doctor for a headache: brain tumor. These are the words I heard when I went with a friend to her appointment with a neurosurgeon. My friend knew the appointment could feel scary and asked me to come along and take notes for her. While this friend is college-educated, works in the healthcare field and has struggled … Read More

Written by Robert Hendrickson, M.D. With a hurricane hitting the eastern U.S. and the news that several hospitals have power outages and have had to evacuate, it’s probably time to take a good look at how OHSU would do in a similar situation. We may not get hurricanes in Portland, but we are certainly at risk for high-wind storms, ice storms/snow events and earthquakes that can cause massive damage to our infrastructure and energy supply.  … Read More

Written by Jeff Gold, M.D. One of my passions has been to better understand the role Electronic Health Records (EHRs) play in the delivery of care in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Health record softwares are very powerful and contain a lot of information and data. Through my past role as an ICU director and my current role as a professor and program director for critical care fellowships, I’ve observed many situations where a clinician … Read More

Written by Jean McCormick, R.N., M.S.N. Innovation is key to improving patient care while reducing costs and enhancing the health of Oregonians. Telemedicine is an effective tool for meeting these goals particularly when transferring a patient from a hospital to a skilled nursing facility. Discharging a patient to a skilled nursing facility is all about coordination and timing: Interventions. Care plans. Paperwork. Prescriptions. Nursing notes help paint the picture of a patient when “handing off” … Read More

Written by Jackie Wirz, Ph.D. What’s on your must-read list? High on mine is Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves by Harvard professor George Church. It hit shelves in the traditional paper and ink format on Tuesday, Oct. 2. Yet Dr. Church has carried billions of copies of his book stored in a small test tube that he carries around in his pocket since last spring. How is this possible? Dr. Church … Read More

Written by Joe Robertson, M.D., M.B.A. When I became OHSU President in 2006, I set out to have a conversation with Oregonians through a series of “swing” trips around the state. As Oregon’s only academic health center, we take pride that our campus includes all 96,000 square miles of our state. To reinforce our statewide presence and commitment, I thought it was important to get out on the road and hear firsthand the issues impacting … Read More

Written by Jeff Kraakevik, M.D. The video included with this post is eleven minutes and forty-one seconds long. It’s a little on the long side for a web-distributed video, but I think it is well worth the investment of your time. The video was first posted in 2010, and is by Sir Kenneth Robinson. In it, he outlines how our education system as a whole has been shaped by the forces of history which were … Read More

Written by Mark Kemball I am not a techie, but my family will tell you that I am addicted to my smartphone. I hear tales of parents who restrict their childrens’ screen time. In our house, it is my teenage daughter who confiscates my phone at mealtimes. Of all the things that my phone does, I am most amazed by its camera. Its tiny dimensions and pin head lens belie its extraordinary clarity, wide zoom … Read More

Written by Jackie Wirz, Ph.D. Recent appearances by a large glowing ball of yellow in the sky have prompted me to get a new bottle of sunscreen. An undisclosed number of years ago, I studied the structural mechanics of DNA repair enzymes. If there is one thing I learned from my research findings it is that sunscreen is a very, very good thing. (Note: here at OHSU, the Lloyd-McCullough lab researches many different aspects of … Read More