February 20, 2010 — David Ollila, UNC Surgical Oncology, joins the “Here’s to Your Health” radio show to discuss melanoma. You can tune in to WCHL 1360 AM either Saturday at 9 a.m., Sunday at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., or Monday at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m to listen to the Dr. Ollila’s discussion.
February 19, 2010 — The SECU Family House is a home away from home for patients at UNC Hospitals. Some of the most inspiring stories and unyielding spirits at the Family House are featured in the “Family House Diaries,” and Jack Newmann is certainly one of those spirits. Although Newmann has been living with severe Type I diabetes and dealing with the resulting consequences, such as being legally blind, for nearly 54 of his 58 years. Nonetheless, he still lives “every day as if its his last.” Not only that, as a retired rehabilitation counselor for the blind, he has the patience and the care to give other patients what they sometime need the most – a friend. Despite his own medical problems and complexities, he makes himself available as a counselor or a friendly ear to other patients and attempts to instill a life of his own at the House.
January 30, 2010 — The News and Observer editorial board expressed admiration for the N.C. Jaycee Burn Center for its continued dedication to quality care for burn patients. The Opinion-Editorial especially praised the Center for its quick response in tending to the needs of disaster patients, the most recent being the three victims of the Haiti earthquake.
January 26, 2010 — The Neurosurgery Residency Review Committee (RRC) approved the expansion of UNC Neurosurgery Resident Complements to two residents per year. The change is effective starting this year; therefore, Neurosurgery will accept two residents from the 2010 resident applicants. In addition, the division will also shorten its residency program from 7 years to 6 years with a total of 12 residents.
January 26, 2010 — Jeff Dehmer, General Surgery Resident at UNC, was recently appointed to a 5 year position as the editor of the Resident and Associate Fellows web pages on eFACS.org, the web portal of the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Dehmer will have responsibility for editing and updating that section of the portal dedicated to surgical residents and fellows.
January 27, 2010 — When the earthquake hit Haiti on January 12th, it shattered the capital city, Port-au-Prince and caused devastating injuries to millions. Many of the victims are still struggling to find medical care. Among them were the three patients who were flown into RDU on January 26 to receive expert medical care at the N.C. Jaycee Burn Center at UNC, one of the best and largest burn centers in the Southeast. The burn patients have suffered severe burns from oil, gasoline, and chemicals on over 25%-40% of their bodies and their conditions are further complicated due to the two week delay in proper medical care. Despite the complications, the burn center staff has promptly began treatment, with one of the patient scheduled to undergo surgery today.
December 11, 2009 — As part of UNC’s surgical initiative in Malawi, Dr. Anthony Charles, UNC Trauma and Critical Care Surgery, and a volunteer surgery team from UNC travel to Malawi regularly to provide surgical care, but Dr. Charles aims to make adequate surgical care permanently accessible to Malawians. “Currently, there are only 15 trained Malawian surgeons of any specialty in the entire country of 14 million people.” However, Dr. Charles hopes to change that by initiating a five-year surgical residency program to train Malawian doctors to become surgeons, implementing a patient data collection database to aid surgeons to provide the most effective care, and enouraging a long-term sustainablity of the changes through policy.
October 15, 2009 — Clara Lee, MD co-authored an article discussing the need to evaluate surgical procedures based on maximization of benefits for the patients. The article entitled “Beyond Outcomes-The Appropriateness of Surgical Care” (.pdf) is published in the October issue of the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA. 2009;302(14):1580-1581).
