Author: Chris Amelung

An operating room trauma team is told their unconscious patient is a Jehovah’s Witness with religious objections to blood transfusions, but the patient has lost a lot of blood. Doctors are faced with ethical dilemmas such as this in hospital rooms and doctor offices around the nation every day. To help deal with these issues, the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values at Washington University offers monthly surgical ethics sessions as a way to contemplate the emotional, humane and legal implications of medical decisions. Read more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Balancing independence and rules can be tough for parents with teenagers.Adolescence is often viewed as a time when children regularly push their parents’ patience to the limits. However, the trials and tribulations of a mother and father may be outweighed by the drastic life changes the teenagers themselves face, and parents should bear this in mind, says WUSM physician Katie Plax in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

StraubeFor many people, their early twenties can be some of life’s most stressful. It’s an adjustment period of being on your own for the first time, for college graduations and the stress of finding and landing that first job. But for 24 year-old Melissa Straube of Highland, IL, that stress was compounded by words she didn’t expect to ever hear at her young age: “You have breast cancer.”

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Raw foods lead to low bone mass (week of April 6) • Genomic analysis for critically ill (week of April 13) • Oxygen causes cataracts (week of April 20) • Botox for foot ulcers (week of April 27)

A new facility for obesity research and treatment will be established at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital thanks to a $5 million donation from the Dr. Robert C. Atkins Foundation. Read more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is rated the third best medical school in the nation, according to this year’s U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate and professional programs released April 1.

WenThree students from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been chosen for prominent offices, including national president, within the American Medical Student Association (AMSA). Leana S. Wen was elected national president; Andrew R. Reinink was named an associate regional trustee for Region VIII; and Kao-Ping Chua was hired for the position of Jack Rutledge Fellow.

Photo by Tim Parker(From left) Sam, Dylan and Ashley Mopkins show the scarves they made for their mom.When dealing with life-threatening diseases such as cancer, complete care sometimes extends to other members of the family. That’s the idea behind the Help Us Give Support (HUGS) program at Siteman Cancer Center. Members of HUGS, children between the ages of 4 and 12, recently took part in an Arts as Healing event to create decorative scarves for their mother or grandmother fighting breast cancer. Read more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Things have been changing around the Becker Library, and the Symposium on Managing Knowledge in the Digital Domain is an engaging event designed to inform WUSM faculty, staff and students of all that is new. The gathering, featuring food and door prizes, takes place 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. April 19 in the library atrium and King […]

Bipolar disorder is often hard to diagnose in children, and it is easy to mistake the disorder’s manic phase for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, warns Joan Luby, a child psychiatrist at the School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Learn more about pediatric bipolar disorder in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.