WTS Scholarship Recipient Heads to Haiti

HelenMari Merritt, MD, a 2010 WTS scholarship recipient and PGY1 at UT Health, was in Haiti for a week to provide medical care to earthquake victims.

Jimani: Dominican Republic/Haitian Border Refugee Hospital

We arrived to chaos. Operating rooms running day and night, an orphanage converted to triage bay, and patients who were more damaged physically and emotionally than any had expected.

 

We treated over 4,000 patients over five days, working day and night, sleeping outside following the aftershocks which scared us and our patients, and helping in any way we could, whether it was operating or holding a scared child at night.

While there were no patients who needed CABGs, VATs, or esophagectomies, there were patients who needed thoracic surgeons, and more importantly physicians. There were pneumothoraces that needed decompression (we didn't have any chest tubes so we decompressed with a red rubber catheter and used water bottle for water-seal), and patients who needed pulmonary toilet after collapsed lungs (we had to be creative, fashioning an incentive spirometer with a 30 cc syringe with a glove tied to the end). There were amputations to be done, and often more of a need for scrub techs, circulators, or transporters than surgeons.

The bottom line is, in Haiti, in times of crisis in general, there is not a great need for specialty surgeons. Where the need lies is in finding versatile, innovative, and compassionate doctors. I can think of no other field where these qualities are so well embodied than our own.
- HelenMari Merritt, MD

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Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Names 1st Woman President

Eilis McGovern, a cardiac surgeon, has been named the next president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Dr. McGovern is not only the first woman president of the Irish College but the first woman president of any of the four Irish/British Colleges (Ireland, England, Edinburgh, and Glasgow) in their more than 1,000-year collective history. Visit http://www.rcsi.ie for more information.

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Lung Cancer Partnership Award Announced

**The application deadline has passed. Awards will be announced on or before Jan. 1, 2010. For more information, visit www.NationalLungCancerPartnership.org.**

To promote research that will increase the understanding of lung cancer risk, biology, and response to treatment, the National Lung Cancer Partnership recently announced its Fifth Annual Research Grant competition. Four two-year $100,000 awards are available to clinical and basic science fellows and junior faculty to advance their research in lung cancer etiology, prevention, early detection, treatment, and symptom management. Three grants will be co-funded with the LUNGevity Foundation, with the assistance of Genentech and sanofi-aventis, and one grant will be funded by the North Carolina Lung Cancer Partnership.

At the time of application, an applicant must hold a doctoral degree (MD, PhD, DO, DrPH, or equivalent), and be a post-doctoral fellow or within the first five years of a faculty appointment at a not-for-profit institution in the United States or Canada. Applications addressing sex differences in lung cancer are particularly encouraged. Applicants will be judged on the merits of their research proposal, career development plan, and research environment.