Category: Health

It may not be the first thing people think of to cheer a child facing a stay in the hospital, but it may be the best.

“People think: a stuffed animal. Well, how about a book? ” said Julie Auenson, patient and family supervisor at American Family Children ‘s Hospital.

Madison residents have a chance to place books in the hands of hospitalized children and children visiting their parents and relatives during the 10th annual Half Pint Library Book Drive.

Flu is on the rise in Wisconsin in a season marked by a vaccine that doesn’t match the main flu strains but does offer some protection, health officials say.

The increase in flu this week and in recent weeks suggests the state will have normal flu levels this winter after a few years of mild activity, doctors say.

A family in Oregon is desperately in need of a miracle. Their one year old daughter was born with a rare medical problem and they’re waiting for a transplant.

Kaylee’s family was sent to from Michigan to Green Bay from the time she was born until late last year for treatment. However, in October, they had to move to Wisconsin, in order to get her on the transplant list and get her closer to her doctors at the UW Hospital in Madison. Now, they are on the move again, temporarily to Boston for more treatment. “We’re going to Boston for a clinical trial medicine and it’s supposed to reduce her bilirubin so that her liver doesn’t need to be transplanted,” explained Christy.

Far fewer lungs were taken from organ donors at UW Hospital and transplanted into patients in 2006 than at most transplant centers, recent data show.

That means patients in Wisconsin and other states who could have received lung transplants didn ‘t, doctors elsewhere say.

A new director is about to start work at Carolinas Medical Center’s ALS center, even as longtime patients continue to complain about the abrupt firing of the center’s founding director.

Dr. Jeffrey Rosenfeld, fired last May, remains in Charlotte, searching for a job. Six months ago, he took the unusual step of suing his former employer, claiming breach of contract and defamation of character. Carolinas Medical Center has denied the allegations.

Dr. Benjamin Brooks, a renowned ALS researcher from the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, will begin work later this month.

As the population of the Upper Midwest ages, more nurses trained in geriatric care are needed for the elderly.

A cooperative program among 25 colleges in the area is being developed with a $1.5 million grant to the University of Minnesota from the John A. Hartford Foundation to develop a Hartford UM Center for Geriatric Nursing Excellence.

Nine Wisconsin institutions participating include Edgewood College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Police officials believe murder victim Joel Marino may have been trying to get to St. Mary’s Hospital across the street from where he collapsed near his south side home.

But Marino was taken by ambulance to UW-Hospital, a distance away.

UW-Hospital is the only facility in the Madison area with what’s called a Level-1 trauma classification.

University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics will be honored next month by the American Stroke Association for its high level of care for stroke victims.

The Madison Fire Department is implementing new cardiac protocols that could potentially triple the survival rate of someone having cardiac arrest.

….Through the efforts of Dr. Darren Bean, medical director of the Madison Fire Department and a University Hospital physician, the Fire Department has gotten approval from the state to allow its paramedics and emergency medical technicians to revise their practices for cardiac resuscitation. The department is also launching a countywide program designed to improve survival rates from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest — rates that have not changed locally or nationally in 20 years.

It was 4 a.m. on a snowy Christmas Eve as Linda Quire lay in her hospital room with her head shaved. She and a doctor wore special goggles to protect their eyes as the physician aimed an experimental laser device through her scalp and skull into her brain.

Quire’s treatment at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison last month was part of a clinical trial to test a novel method for protecting brain cells hours after a stroke. Doctors say such therapies are desperately needed because most stroke victims don’t get to a hospital soon enough.

On Aug. 2, 2003, George Hoffberg was recovering from apparently successful brain surgery at UW Hospital. He fell from his bed, sustaining serious head injuries. He never spoke again. He died nine months later, at age 70.

Hoffberg’s widow, Donna, sued the hospital in July 2006, saying its “agents and employees” were negligent in failing to prevent George, a former health-care administrator, from falling “while he was vulnerable.” She wanted the UW to make changes to prevent similar falls.

“No money can replace George,” says Donna, who planned to give any payment to his alma mater, the University of Michigan, and several charities. “I miss him.”

Since the beginning of recorded history, competitive athletes have tried to enhance their performance in every way imaginable. Naked Greeks put on shoes. Babylonians used herbs. Kenyans trained at high altitude. American swimmers used greasy swimsuits. Marathoners loaded their bodies with carbohydrates. But none of these enhancing technologies has created the hysteria surrounding anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (HGH).

What are the claims of those who would condemn elite athletes or send them to prison for trying to maximize their performance? The simple answer is that they are breaking the rules, or in some cases, the law. But the rules depend on arguments or claims that are morally incoherent, hypocritical, or based on ice-cold wrong information.

MADISON, Wis. — The increase in Wisconsin cigarette prices and enhancements to the states tobacco quit line seem to be encouraging more people to attempt to kick the habit.

The Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services and the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention report that in the week after the tax on a pack of cigarettes increased by $1, the quit line offered by the groups received as many calls as it did in all of last year. About 9,000 people called the toll-free line during the first week of January, the department said, up from about 200 calls per week last year.

As she retires after 43 years of nursing at University Hospital, Nancy Jolliffe remembers one patient particularly well. Walter, from Rockford, Ill., had bladder and prostate cancer.

“He was 78 when I met him in 1988,” Jolliffe recalled. “I cared for him for four years.”

Toward the end of that time, she stopped in Rockford to see him on the way back from Chicago. That was not part of her job; she knew he was not doing well and thought she should visit.

Dr. Benjamin Brooks, whose neurological diseases research lab was shut down four years ago by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, is leaving UW-Madison for North Carolina.

Four Madison area hospitals reported that they received 54 victims of the pileup, including UW Hospital, Meriter Hospital, St. Mary’s Hospital and Stoughton Hospital, WISC-TV reported.

UW Hospital officials said that the crash victims in the most critical conditions were taken there. They said that they received eight total victims between 4 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., with one listed in critical condition and seven listed in serious condition as of 6 p.m.

Officials said that the hospital’s multi-victim trauma and emergency plans both went into effect, which called for more staff to treat the victims.
“Every hospital, including this one, drills emergency plans,” said UW Hospital spokeswoman Lisa Brunette. “We drill our plan at least twice a year so that people know where they’re expected to be, how they’re expected to behave and what duties and tasks they’re expected to perform.”

MADISON, Wis. — An adult oncology nurse who worked at the University of Wisconsin Hospital for her entire career is retiring after decades of serving the public.

Nancy Joliffe, 64, who works in the Paul Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center, is retiring after 43 years of wearing her signature white nursing cap and uniform at UW Hospital.

An institution of sorts at UW Hospital ended Friday afternoon. Longtime nurse, Nancy Jolliffe, wrapped up her 43-year career.

Jolliffe began working for UW on September 7, 1964. For most of her career, she has worked in oncology, including her last 13 years with UW’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. She said it was the patients who motivated her to come to work every day. “The patient continuity that develops when you work with these folks, is very very special,” said Jolliffe. It’s those patients, through good times, and bad. They’re not always happy times. But they’re special.”

It was a heartbreaking situation that Rachel Thill never dreamed she’d be in. How was she going to tell Stella, her 18-month-old daughter, that she’d never see Papa again?

Thill’s husband, Craig, died unexpectedly in October 2005 at age 39. An autopsy was not conclusive, but sleep apnea and cardiac arrhythmia might have been contributing factors.

“All I know is that our world changed forever the night Craig died,” says Thill, who lives in Verona and is a program assistant in sports medicine at UW Research Park in Madison.

Quoted: Joel Wish, a UW pediatric health psychologist

The woman hired to lead the UW Hospitals and Clinics was “terminated” from her last job, a letter from her attorney claims, but UW Hospital officials are saying her departure stemmed from a difference of opinion over how to run a large health system.

IOWA CITY â?? University of Iowa officials told outgoing University Hospitals Chief Executive Officer Donna Katen-Bahensky in October her contract would not be renewed, which led to her resignation, documents released Friday revealed.

But a UI official and Katen-Bahensky’s lawyer said Friday she was not fired from her position of leading the state’s largest specialty, teaching and research hospital. The documents show she received a $829,958 severance.

Former University Hospitals CEO Donna Katen-Bahensky was actually fired prior to tendering her resignation last month, according to documents released Friday by the University of Iowa.

Because she was fired without cause, UI is sending her off with an $830,000 severance package, which stems from a contractual clause that calls for a payout worth double her salary. Her base salary is $465,000.

Katen-Bahensky’s last day at UI is Monday. Katen-Bahensky, who did not immediately return a phone call Friday, starts a new post Feb. 4 as president and CEO of University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics. She will earn $600,000 annually in her new post.

University of Iowa Hospitals CEO Donna Katen-Bahensky’s contract was terminated earlier this year because she did not support a recent reorganization linking the hospital and medical school, officials acknowledged Friday.

“She had a problem with that structure and that philosophy,” said Jean Robillard, vice president for medical affairs at the U of I. “There was nothing personal.”

Because her contract was terminated, Katen-Bahensky â?? who has since taken a $600,000-a-year position at the University of Wisconsin â?? will receive about $830,000 in severance pay from the U of I.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” was initially all that Dr. Amna Buttar could say this morning, stunned to find out that former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto had been killed in a suicide bomb attack at a political rally in Rawalpindi today.

Buttar, until recently an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School, had been in Pakistan since October, joining Bhutto on the former prime minister’s triumphant return to her native country after eight years in exile.

“Everyone is in shock,” Buttar said. “It is very sad.”

Donna Katen-Bahensky is about to take control of two hospitals, 10 clinics, 7,200 employees and an annual operating budget approaching $800 million, but her main concern right now is finding a school that her son likes.

….She also has met — individually — with members of the management team of the hospital, as well as the heads of the School of Medicine and Public Health and the Medical Foundation.

Tasks that will have to be dealt with relatively soon include developing a new strategic plan and a long-range facilities plan.

Influenza vaccines once perceived to benefit only high-risk populations — the elderly, the very young and those with chronic diseases — are becoming more commonplace for all ages, including college students.

According to Dr. Sarah Van Orman, director of clinical services at University Health Services for UW-Madison, the flu also poses risks to students.

Your nurse practitioner â?? and your physical therapist and your audiologist â?? soon will be your “doctor.”

Nursing schools at UW-Madison and Edgewood College are planning to replace their master’s degree programs for specialty nurses with doctorate degrees. It is part of a national trend requiring professional doctorates as part of certification for nurse practitioners, other specialty nurses and some other health-care workers.

Dear Editor: As a fourth-year medical student, I have spent time in clinics asking patients if they are interested in getting the flu vaccine. Many people get the vaccine. However, many patients tell me that they “never get sick” or that “I got the flu vaccine once and got the flu.”

….Influenza is not trivial. The Centers for Disease Control report that 5-20 percent of the population gets the flu each year, 200,000 are hospitalized due to complications, and 36,000 people die. The very young, the very old, and those with conditions such as asthma, diabetes, pregnancy, or heart disease are most at risk for serious complications.

(Rebekah Jakel is a fellow in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health)

The Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services and the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention are planning a special offer for state residents who want to quit smoking.

A report on steroid use by pro baseball players is out, and you might be surprised what one UW Hospital doctor has to say about the subject. Dr. Norman Fost, a medical ethicist and physician at UW Hospital, compares the release of a report on steroid use in baseball to the Salem Witch Trials. Fost says if today’s players have an advantage over their predecessors, or competitors it’s not necessarily because of the dope. “New ballparks deliberately make the fences shorter, so there will be more home runs,” says Fost.

MADISON, Wis. — This month marks the 40th anniversary of the first human to human heart transplant, and University of Wisconsin Hospital doctors said researchers are working on even more revolutionary changes in the field.

WISC-TV and Channel 3000 previously reported on the story of Tina Adam, who was waiting for a heart transplant while using a ventricular assist device. She got that transplant last Wednesday and has been recovering at UW Hospital.