Critical Care

A 15-member volunteer team of critical-care specialists from the Shock-Trauma Unit in Baltimore is standing by, ready to go into American military hospitals in Germany to handle any casualties from the Persian Gulf.The Shock-Trauma team, which can be mobilized within 24 hours, is one of 25 teams recruited by the Society of Critical Care Medicine from 75 major medical centers across the country for overseas wartime duty, said Dr. T. James Gallagher, the society's president and director of critical care at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

The biggest construction project on Baltimore's west side is set to reach a milestone Thursday, when a "topping off" ceremony will be held for the University of Maryland Medical Center's nine-story, $160 million Trauma/Critical Care Tower at Lombard and Penn streets. When it opens in 2013, the 140,000-square-foot building will significantly expand the University of Maryland R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center and the medical center's adult and pediatric emergency departments. Built to connect the Shock Trauma Center with the medical center's Weinberg Building, the new structure will also contain a center for training civilian and military health professionals.

Rebecca Sherron is doing what she always wanted -- serving the community where she lives."I appreciate and enjoy being part of the community I am serving," said the new director of Critical Care Nursingat Carroll County General Hospital. "This hospital is growing, and Ilike the challenge of doing new things. It's exciting when you are changing things for the community."Sherron, who holds one of the hospital's top executive nursing posts, oversees care of acutely ill patients. Sherron had the same responsibilities for seven years at Baltimore County General Hospital.

The University of Maryland Medical Center has earned international recognition for its shock trauma center, which treats patients with severe injuries. Now the medical center is becoming home to the National Trauma and Emergency Medicine Training Center, which will prepare military and civilian health care workers to deliver Shock Trauma's caliber of care. The training center, the first in the country, will be part of a $160 million expansion that the medical center's leaders plan to build in downtown Baltimore starting this spring and open in 2013.

Sending up today's insurance-driven medicine racket is tantamount to shooting fish in a barrel. As the nexus of so many charged themes -- life, death, greed, vanity and a surfeit of litigation -- the hospital seems sent straight from central casting as the ideal institutional symbol for most of our societal ills."

When Debbie Van Orden was named 1995 nurse of the year at North Arundel Hospital, her co-worker and competitor Terry DeVeaux cried."But I wasn't crying because I had lost," DeVeaux said. "I was crying because she was my best friend, and I was so happy for her."This year, it's DeVeaux's turn to enjoy the spotlight. The 42-year-old Pasadena resident won the hospital's nurse of the year honors over 11 other candidates.The critical care nurse and mother of three teen-age boys was awarded a plaque, a dozen roses, and a weekend stay in the Poconos at a reception last week.

The University of Maryland Medical Center has earned international recognition for its shock trauma center, which treats patients with severe injuries. Now the medical center is becoming home to the National Trauma and Emergency Medicine Training Center, which will prepare military and civilian health care workers to deliver Shock Trauma's caliber of care. The training center, the first in the country, will be part of a $160 million expansion that the medical center's leaders plan to build in downtown Baltimore starting this spring and open in 2013.

Dr. Marc Applestein, a urologist on staff at Howard County General Hospital, has been named president of the professional staff. Dr. Jonathan S. Fish, an internist, was named vice president, and Dr. Francis S. Chuidian, a specialist in pulmonary disease and critical care, was named secretary/treasurer. Applestein joined the hospital's professional staff in 1988. He graduated cum laude from Duke University with a bachelor of science, and from the University of Maryland with a doctorate in medicine.

Jennifer Daniels expected to be at Carroll Hospital Center for only a few hours after being admitted in July for emergency outpatient gallbladder surgery. But her hospital stay stretched to four days and, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court, turned life-threatening after a nurse allegedly administered intravenous insulin instead of the antibiotics that Daniels' doctor had prescribed in the hours before her operation. The lawsuit filed by the 31-year-old Owings Mills woman seeks not only financial compensation for her experience but also an end to the $12,000 in medical bills that Daniels' lawyer says the hospital continues to try to collect for the resulting tests, cardiac evaluation and critical-care stay.

The Baltimore Washington Medical Center has nearly doubled its size with the completion of a $117 million expansion that will accommodate more critical care patients and increase space for its outpatient services, at a time when the hospital has seen an increase in the demand for health care. And as part of the expansion, for the first time since the 1960s the hospital will be a designated birthing center. A labor and delivery unit is expected to open in the fall. (Although the hospital doesn't currently have a delivery unit, about 20 to 25 women give birth each year at the hospital through its emergency department, according to hospital officials.

Salary: $32,000 Age: 32 Years on the job: 10 How she got started: After high school, Erica Small knew she wanted to go into the medical field and started taking classes at what is now Stevenson University. She switched to the Community College of Baltimore County and became certified as an emergency medical technician and a certified nursing assistant. While still in school, she began working as a patient service associate in Sinai Hospital's emergency room. When she graduated from CCBC, she began working in the same department as a critical care technician.

DR. ROBIN MARIE SMITH, DVM, age 52, died at Northwest Hospital Center, Inc., Randallstown, MD, on Friday, January 16, 2009 with close friends and family attending. She was born February 21, 1956 at WRAMC, D.C., to John and Viola Wilkinson and graduated with honors from the University of Missouri-Columbia College of Veterinary Medicine in 1986. Dr. Smith had a successful career in veterinary emergency/critical care and her close friends remember Robin as one of the kindest and most professional doctors who ever cared for animals.

Dr. Marc Applestein, a urologist on staff at Howard County General Hospital, has been named president of the professional staff. Dr. Jonathan S. Fish, an internist, was named vice president, and Dr. Francis S. Chuidian, a specialist in pulmonary disease and critical care, was named secretary/treasurer. Applestein joined the hospital's professional staff in 1988. He graduated cum laude from Duke University with a bachelor of science, and from the University of Maryland with a doctorate in medicine.

The Baltimore Washington Medical Center has nearly doubled its size with the completion of a $117 million expansion that will accommodate more critical care patients and increase space for its outpatient services, at a time when the hospital has seen an increase in the demand for health care. And as part of the expansion, for the first time since the 1960s the hospital will be a designated birthing center. A labor and delivery unit is expected to open in the fall. (Although the hospital doesn't currently have a delivery unit, about 20 to 25 women give birth each year at the hospital through its emergency department, according to hospital officials.

In the office of Dr. Elizabeth "Betsy" Hunt, words attributed to Louisa May Alcott hang on the wall: "I am not afraid of storms for I have learned how to sail my ship." For Hunt, or "Dr. Betsy," as she likes to be called, her storms are pediatric emergencies and her ship is simulation. As early as 1980, Hunt was preparing for emergency situations, either as captain of the safety patrol squad or as a lifeguard at the local pool. By simulating bus accidents and heart attacks, she recognized the value of a plan.

Shock Trauma team to help quake victims Three doctors, a nurse and an engineer from Maryland Shock Trauma Center plan to travel to China today to help treat victims of the May 12 earthquake that devastated the central part of the country. The team plans to help doctors at West China Hospital, a huge, modern facility in Chengdu - about 50 miles from the quake's epicenter - where more than 2,000 quake victims have been treated. Dr. Thomas Scalea, Shock Trauma's physician in chief, said he and his colleagues offered to help soon after the earthquake struck.

Acting on their own, or with at least the tacit consent of doctors or families, one in five nurses in intensive care units report that they have deliberately hastened patients' deaths, according to a national survey.But a number of experts said the survey questions were so ambiguous that they were subject to misinterpretation.Instead of revealing critical care units filled with self-appointed angels of death, they said, the nurses' responses revealed their anxieties and confusion about where palliative care ends and euthanasia begins.