Monthly newsletter of the BU Medical Campu

Boston University Medical Center

O'Brien, Jennifer C.

English

Boston University Institutional Repository (OpenBU)

Boston UniversityOpenBU http://open.bu.eduBU Publications Campus Update1991-03Campus Update: March 1991 v. 3,no. 3https://hdl.handle.net/2144/18747Boston UniversityB O S T O N U N I V E R I T Y M E D I Boston University Medical Campus March 1991 Vol. 3 No. 3 Campus U P D A T E Native Latvian Medical Center safety manuals Se SPH to educate ail employees The road to Boston, let alone to Boston University School of Public Health (SPH), was a tumultuous and challeng-ing one for SPH administra-tor Dzidra Knecht. The na-tive-bom Latvian sirrvived the subjugation of her homeland to Soviet com-munism under Stalin in 1940, and the horrors of the German Nazi invasion during World War II. She overcame the strain of im-migration to a new land, the United States, in 1950, and has lived as far north as Buf-falo, N.Y., and as far west as New Mexico. Now, seated self-assuredly behind her desk in a sunny office on the fourth floor of the SPH, she is testimony to the strength of the human spirit. Knecht emanates a serene strength and warmth. A broad smile plays across her face. Knecht becomes animated when she talks Knecht continued on page 4 An intensive collaborative ef-fort during the last year has led to the completion of two Medical Center safety manuals that are intended to promote the highest level of safety for all members of the Medical Center community. The "Working Safety at BUMC" manual, which will be distributed to all employees in the upcoming months, explains who is responsible for the Medical Center's safety operations and procedures. It also eon-tains important information on the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Ad-ministration (OSHA) Hazard Communication Standard and the OSHA New Lab Standard. A second manual, en-titled the "Boston University Medical Center Safety Manual," explains the New Lab Standard, and reviews the procedures for handling hazardous materials by presenting detailed informa-tion on safety procedures that employees and students should follow when working in laboratories. This com-prehensive manual is now being distributed to the chemical hygiene officers of each laboratory. The "Working Safely at BUMC"manual explains who is responsible for the Medical Center's safety operations and procedures. The Medical Center's three-pronged safety-educa-tion program is designed to target all members of the Medical Center community. Upon hire, employees are in-troduced to the Medical Center's safety program, operations and procedures during their employee-orien-tation program. Employees who work in laboratories get additional, specific training that relates to the chemicals used in their laboratories. This training is given by a chemical hygiene officer as-signed to a particular Safety manuals continued on page 3 Employees offered office-procedure, professional-development workshops Dzidra Knecht, assistant director for adntinistration at the SPH, said she loves the School's stimulating environment. The Office of Personnel in March will offer the fourth series in a set of Procedural and Professional Develop-ment Workshops for Boston University Medical Campus employees. The workshops are designed to familiarize interested employees with the policies and procedures of administrative offices and services, such as the Offices of Intemationai Students and Scholars, Personnel, Payroll, Purchasing, and Grant and Contract Account-ing. In addition to the proce-dural workshops, there will be professional-development workshops on telephone and interpersonal communica-tions skills and on how to make presentation shdes on a Macintosh computer. Another workshop will review employee benefits of-fered through Boston Univer-sity. A brochure describing the workshops has been mailed to all Medical Cam-pus employees, along with registration forms. All Pro-cedural and Professional Development Workshops are offered free of charge to employees. For more infor-mation, contact Office of Personnel Employee Rela-tions Representative Jim Chalmers, at 638-4610 (x4610).n Campus Update March 1991 /2 A bird's-eye view of the Medical Center compiex May 1939 This photograph, taken in May 1939, indicates the major construction changes that have been made in the area including and surrounding the Medical Campus during the last five decades. TTie campus is pictured in the bottom left of the picture, while the Fort Point Channel, seen on the right side and paralleling Albany Street, is now filled-in land on which Lot A and Lot C are located. Tbese parking lots, as well as part of Boston City Hospital's adjacent land, will undergo still further change, as Boston University and the University Hospital prepare to constmct a proposed new Medical Center office, research and parking facility on the land. This 1939 photograph hangs in the reception area of the Dean's Office, just outside Dean Aram V. Chobanian's office. plioto: Aerial Pliotos International, Inc. Campus Update March 1991 /3 Safety manuals detail Medical Center policies Safety manuals continued from page 1 laboratory. A third level of instruction is given to chemi-cal hygiene officers, who receive extensive training by the Safety Office to carry out the lab safety program. The development of the safety manuals involved input from members of the Medical Campus, the Univer-sity Hospital and the Charles River Campus. They ad-dressed the pohcies, proce-dures and standards related to laboratory safety, as well as to other potentially haz-ardous situations. Members of the Medical Center community who wish to make suggestions or comments about the Safety Office's programs are en-couraged to contact John demons, director of the Medical Center Safety Of-fice, at 638-8832 (x8832). The success of these safety programs depends upon the ability of employees and stu-dents of the Medical Center to carry out the policies, pro-cedures and safety standards noted in the two safety manuals. As BUMC Direc-tor Richard H. Egdahl, M.D., stated, ensuring safety at the Medical Center is a respon-sibility shared by all of us. Putting these safety stand-ards into practice will help to ensure that the safety of employees, students, patients and visitors is main-tained. • School's Naval Blood Laboratory contributes to blood stockpiling effort In Persian Gulf War The School of Medicine's Naval Blood Research Laboratory is working close-ly with the U.S. Armed Ser-vices to help stockpile blood for treating casualties in the Persian CulfWar. The NBRL, which developed the technology to freeze red blood cells and revolutionized blood bank-ing for the military, is send-ing frozen red cells to the Persian Culf to supplement the supply of hquid red cells. The frozen blood will be used by medical personnel on hospital ships, and at sites in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and Europe. The NBRL also has been teaching ac-tive duty and reserve person-nel the procedures necessary to thaw and wash the red blood cells prior to trans-fusion. The current freeze-preser-vation procedure was developed in 1980 by NBRL Director C. Robert Valeri, M.D., a professor of medicine at BUSM and a retired captain in the United States Navy. The freeze-preservation procedure ex-tends the shelf life of blood from a matter of days up to 21 years. Worth noting here is the recent death of Charles P. "Bud" Emerson, M.D., who, as principal investigator at the NBRL, discovered a tech-nique for improving the storage of blood. Dr. Emer-son was also the former chief of Hematology at the Univer-sity Hospital. The University Hospital participates in the NBRL's work by drawing blood for re-search studies to extend the shelf life of previously frozen red blood cells. The NBRL also is helping the mihtary preserve ap-proximately half of its blood supply, rather than discard-ing it after 35 days when it is no longer usable. The military is sending type O blood back to the NBRL just prior to the end of its shelf life. Researchers there use another technique they developed to rejuvenate the blood. They add a mixture of pyruvate, inosine, phos-jhate and adenine to the old 5lood, which restores the blood to the potency of week-old blood. This blood then is frozen and stored until needed. The NBRL is involved in the mihtary's plans to stock-pile over 200,000 units of type O frozen red blood cells. The process, which began last year, will take several years to complete. To date, approximately 40,000 units have been frozen and stored at a variety of locations. • I.Q.S are limited in ability to predict future success Medical Center employees who have children may be interested in a BUSM professor's assessment that I.Q. tests should not be relied upon too heavily in evaluating a child's poten-tial to succeed in life. "I.Q. tests are hmited in their ability to predict a child's future success, and should not be used to label children or to create expecta-tions," said Donald S. Cair, M.D., a BUSM professor and the chairman of the Depart-ment of Child Psychiatry and Child Development. An I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score that is in-tended to indicate a child's intelligence. It is deter-mined by dividing the child's mental age (deter-mined by the I.Q. test) by his chronological age and then multiplying that factor by 100. I.Q. tests, developed in France a century ago, were originally intended to diagnose mental retardation. Today, their primary use is as a diagnostic tool for learn-ing disabilities. t Q. tests should not be used to labd children or to create expectations' An I.Q. score may give some indication of basic in-telhgence or the presence of a learning disabiUty, but it does not measure many fac-tors that contribute to a suc-cessful hfe, Cair said. "Intelligence tests cannot determine certain relative forms of intelligence, such as common sense, 'street smarts,' confidence, a dis-ciplined work ethic and the desire to learn—all at-tributes that contribute to a child's chances for success," he said. In addition, Cair said, in-telligence tests are often cul-turally biased, so that any score is only vahd when compared to the scores of those people who have similar education, mental stimulation and socioeconomic environ-ments. Cair also believes that it can be psychologically damaging for a child or an adolescent to be told his or her I.Q. score. "To some children, for instance, a score that is lower than ex-pected—even a good score— can damage their self-es-teem," he said. "By the same token, those who score high may feel exces-sive pressure to measure up to the score and to other people's expectations." • Campus Update Marchl991 /4 llllllllllllllllllllllllll E . p / o y e . P r o / / , a | | Knecht continued from page 1 about her work at the SPH, saying she's found great satis-faction in the stimulating in-tellectual environment. It is a place "where words are made," she said, noting the stark contrast between creat-ing ideas and producing voice scramblers, as a com-pany for which she once worked did. She also speaks of the SPH's familylike at-mosphere, and expresses gratitude for the kindness of SPH faculty and the physicians at the University Hospital who saved her Lat-vian cousin's badly bumed foot when she visited Knecht last summer. (See story below.) Knecht came to the SPH in 1982, after working for 10 years on the Charles River Campus, five years as the ad-ministrator at the African Studies Center, and five years as the executive officer for the College of Liberal Arts. "B.U. has been a wonderful place to work," she said. "I have worked very hard within the University, and it's been so fulfilUng." She is particularly fond of her current role at SPH, where she is the assistant director for administration. "It's sort of like being an air traffic controller," she said. "There are a lot of stacked planes, and I have to get the one down that's having an emergency. Every day that I plan is different. "One thing that's mar-velous about this school is that it's never static," she added. "There's always something new that some-one has in mind. I end up being the sounding board—I always am aware of what's going on." She cites the SPH's new miwifery/M.P.H. program for registered nur-ses—the only such program, other than Yale University's, in New England, she pointed out— and the conflict-resolution seminar recently held by SPH Adjunct Professor Leonard J. Marcus, Ph.D. Little about Knecht's per-sonal life appears to have been static, either. Her youth was marred by the tides of political forces that continue to rock the Baltic states. In 1940, the Soviets rolled into Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, suppressing what had been democratic repubUcs since their inde-pendence in 1918. Her brother, who was a univer-sity student, was deported to Siberia, never to be seen again by his family. The family was told years later by someone that he was beheved to have died on the march north. 'One thing that's mar-velous about this school is that it's never static/ she said. In 1942, when the Nazis invaded the Baltic countries, Knecht and her four sisters and mother were amongst the hundreds of thousands of people taken from their homes to work in Nazi slave-labor camps in Germany; her mother would never again see her husband, who was left behind. Following World Warn, Knecht and her mother and sisters were placed in refugee "displaced-persons" camp in Germany before they were able to im-migrate to Buffalo, N.Y., in 1950. Knecht doesn't relate this story with self-pity. "It's a story all of us [Lat-vians] share," she said. "It's not unique. It does give some understanding, per-haps, of why we have such an incredible desire to fight for [Latvian] independence [from the Soviets]," how-ever. "Some people misinterpret this as super-nationalism, when it's just a desire to retain a culture and a language," she said. And fight for this freedom she does. Knecht is one of thousands of American Latvians who par-ticipates in demonstrations and writes members of Con-gress, urging the U.S. government to pressure the Soviet government to release the Baltic states from its grip. In early January, she participated in an ovemight vigil at Fanueil Hall to show objec-tion to the killings that oc-cured in Lithuania in December when Soviet troops fired on inde-pendence fighters. • Visiting Latvian cousin witnesses America at its best Benita Kokaine, the Latvian cousin of School of Public Health (SPH) administrator Dzidra Knecht, made her first trip to the United States last summer, taking ad-vantage of the freedom of travel for Latvians under Soviet glastnost, and her suc-cess—after a two-year wait— in obtaining a seat on an Aeroflot flight to Washington, D.C. Kokaine planned to travel with her cousin, the assistant director for administration at SPH, through the midwest, visit-ing relatives she hadn't seen in 45 years. But once in America, she had to scratch her plans. When Kokaine, who speaks no English, dis-embarked from the plane, she could barely walk, due to a bad burn she'd sus-tained on her foot in Latvia. Instead of seeing much of America, she saw some of the best of America, in terms of the compassion and high-quality, highly acces-sible medical care she received from faculty at SPH and physicians at the Univer-sity Hospital (UH). Knecht called her boss. SPH Director Norman Scotch, Ph.D., from Washington as soon as she saw her cousin's foot. He put her in touch immedi-ately with physicians in Washington, D.C., who deter-mined that her cousin's burn needed sophisticated medi-cal treatment and that she should not make the trip to the midwest. Knecht drove her cousin to Boston, where she was admitted to the University Hospital and treated "with great kindness, skill and generosity," accord-ing to Knecht. "That's the thing about America," Knecht said. "Those doctors in Washington and at the University Hospital didn't even know me. The people in Boston—the SPH and UH doctors and nurses—were in-credible; Benita was in the hospital for 10 days recover-ing from surgery, including skin grafts to cover the burned area. They saved her foot." • Campus Update is published monthly by the Boston University Medical Campus Office of Business Affairs: William J. Casper, associate vice president. Article ideas may be addressed to Mr. Gasper or to Michael J. Donovan, director of Persormel. The publication is produced by the Office of Publication Services: Owen J. McNamara, director; Jennifer C. O'Brien, editor/writer; Catherine LeBlanc, designer; Linda Luiso, design/production assitant. 

Campus Update: March 1991 v. 3, no. 3

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Campus Update: March 1991 v. 3, no. 3

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