October 6, 2006

In General

Emery N. Brown, MD, PhD, of the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, has been elected a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA). To be named a fellow, a member of the ASA must have an established reputation and have made outstanding contributions in the field of statistical work. Brown was recognized for cross-disciplinary research in the statistics of neuronal spike trains, medical neuroimaging and circadian rhythms; excellence as an ambassador between the fields of statistics and medical research; and service to the profession.

Eirini Nestoridi, a research fellow at the MassGeneral Hospital for Children, recently won the Best Manuscript by a Young Investigator in the Field of Vascular Biology Award for her work as first author of "Shiga toxin enhances functional tissue factor on human glomerular endothelial cells: Implications for the pathophysiology of hemolytic uremic syndrome." The award is presented annually by the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis to honor the best manuscripts published in the previous calendar year by first authors younger than age 35. The other authors of the work are MGHers Olga Tsukurov, MD; Rafail Kushak, PhD, DSc; Julie Ingelfinger, MD; and Eric Grabowski, MD, ScD.

May Pian-Smith, MD, co-chief of Obstetric Anesthesia at the MGH, recently was recognized by Paul Levy, president and chief executive officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), for completing the Rabkin Fellowship in Medical Education. The fellowship is sponsored by Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Shapiro Institute at BIDMC to enhance the expertise faculty need to provide the best education possible for students and residents to assume leadership roles as educators at HMS and across the nation.

The American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) recently elected four MGH faculty members as first fellows. To be elected, individuals must be physicians or scientists considered to be the most distinguished in the history of the field. The MGH fellows are George Chen, PhD, director of Radiation Oncology Physics; Michael Goitein, PhD, professor emeritus of Radiation Oncology Physics; William Shipley, MD, the Andres Soriano Professor of Radiation Oncology and director of GU Radiation Oncology; and Herman D. Suit, MD, professor of Radiation Oncology and chair emeritus.

The MGH Nursing Ambulatory to Hospital Transitions (NAHT) Program was awarded a grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of its Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI), which aims to explore the association between nursing and high-quality patient care. The INQRI supports projects that will generate and disseminate research to help hospitals improve care by better understanding and supporting nurses' roles in shaping care quality. Grant recipients receive up to $300,000 for two-year projects. The goal of the MGH NAHT Program is to test the impact of identifying and communicating a pre-hospital preventive patient risk profile on nurse-sensitive outcomes for hospitalized older adults.