Medical School

Two hundred and fifty young men and women walked into a Center City hotel conference room yesterday afternoon, a colorful array of suits and ties, slacks and dresses. They all walked out clothed in the same starched white coat. Amid a backdrop of hope and jitters, and basking in the loving gaze of family and friends, the first-year medical students at MCP/Hahnemann School of Medicine joined at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel in a White-Coat Ceremony, the symbolic beginning to their professional career.

Christian J. Lambertsen, 93, founder of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute of Environmental Medicine and developer of the first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus - scuba gear - died Feb. 11 at Dunwoody, a retirement community in Newtown. He formerly lived in Ardmore. A native of Scotch Plains, N.J., Dr. Lambertsen worked as a youth at resorts along Barnegat Bay. An expert swimmer, he began experimenting with homemade diving equipment. He earned a bachelor's degree from Rutgers University and attended the Penn School of Medicine, where he worked on his diving apparatus by using parts from anesthesia machines.

John J. Mikuta, 88, a longtime medical professor and clinician at the University of Pennsylvania and a pioneer in the diagnosis and treatment of gynecological cancers, died Friday, Jan. 25, at the Medford Leas retirement community. Dr. Mikuta grew up in Scranton and came to Penn to study medicine. Aside from a stint as a U.S. Army doctor between his internship and residency, he never really left. He earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at Penn, did all his postgraduate training there, and went on to head Penn's Division of Gynecologic Oncology - a specialty he helped create.

Kathryn "Brooke" Baxter, 32, formerly of New Hope, a student at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, died Sunday in a bus accident in Tanzania. Ms. Baxter was in Africa for the summer as a volunteer for the Lwala Community Alliance in Kenya, working with pregnant women infected with HIV and malaria. She was commissioned as an Army lieutenant last summer, and had completed her first year of medical school on an Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship.

Nightmare, disaster, catastrophe, an unholy mess. We're running out of descriptions to match the desperate situation of the Allegheny health care system. Just when it seems it can't get worse, it gets worse. Now, with Drexel University's rejection of a plan to manage the Allegheny medical school, the deal to buy eight local hospitals could fail. Tenet Healthcare bid a fire-sale price of $345 million for the hospitals, which translates to only a few cents on the dollar for Allegheny's 80,000 creditors.

At a University of Pennsylvania cocktail party recently, business magnate Ray Perelman expounded on why he had bestowed $225 million on Penn's medical school - a gift that means the place now bears his name. David L. Cohen, the Comcast executive and chair of Penn's board of trustees, recalled listening intently as Perelman talked about the university's role in health care, civic life, and so on. Suddenly, Perelman paused. "If it wasn't for that man, I would never have made this gift," Perelman said, pointing over Cohen's shoulder at a slender fellow who had walked nearby.

Surgeon John M. Daly, a graduate of Temple University's School of Medicine, was named the school's new dean yesterday. Daly has been chairman of the department of surgery at Weill Medical College at Cornell University in New York City and surgeon-in-chief at the New York Presbyterian Hospital at Cornell since 1993. His specialty is surgical oncology. Daly will take over Nov. 1 for Richard Kozera, the acting dean of the medical school since January, when former dean Leon Malmud stepped down to resume teaching.

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has put a brake on plans to take over Camden County's Lakeland hospital as a teaching institution, thereby skirting an increasingly testy political feud over the facility. Dr. Frederick J. Humphrey, dean of the School of Osteopathic Medicine, wrote to Camden County Freeholder Michael J. DiPiero last week that the university would be unable to offer an immediate proposal to affiliate with the county's embattled hospital, the Camden County Health Services Complex at Lakeland.

Dr. Martin Goldberg, chairman of the department of internal medicine at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and an authority in the field of kidney disease, has been named dean of the Temple University School of Medicine. Goldberg, 55, a Philadelphia native, was chief of the Kidney Disease Section of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) between 1967 and 1979, when he went to Cincinnati. He will assume his new post July 1, succeeding Dr. Sol Sherry, who has been interim dean for two years, Temple President Peter J. Liacouras announced today.

Every so often, Jayne Robertson and Kevin McGibney get to wondering whether there will be enough time for them to get it all done. "Let's see," McGibney was saying last week at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, 3300 Henry Ave., where he and Robertson are students. "We'll graduate in 1991, do four years' residency, and -. " "And all the while," Robertson said, interrupting, "the clock will be running on us. " Jayne Robertson and Kevin McGibney, see, are pretty special people at the medical school.

In the 27 years that Stanley Austin has lived at the South Fifth Street rowhouse in Camden where his wife grew up, he's raised five children and started a DJ business. Austin's memory-full house will be torn down, along with another dozen properties, as Rowan University paves the way for Block 189 to be transformed into a parking garage with first-floor shops. The block is bounded by Fifth, Benson, Williams, and Washington Streets. Since June, Rowan has been in negotiations with the owners of 22 properties that make up the block behind the new Cooper Medical School of Rowan University.

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ranked third on U.S. News and World Report's latest list of the nation's best graduate business schools. It was the top showing for Penn among the numerous rankings of graduate schools made public Tuesday by U.S. News, which is now an online magazine but still prints its lists in special issues. Harvard and Stanford Universities tied for first place on the business-school list. Penn tied for seventh on the list for best law school with the University of Virginia.

Wesley Saintilnord dreamed of becoming a doctor but it wasn't until the 2010 earthquake ravaged his country that he could see a way to make it happen. Saintilnord grew up in rural Haiti, the son of a preacher raising three children and four orphaned family members. They relied on his mother, who sells clothes at a nearby market. His exemplary schoolwork earned him a monthlong program during the summer of 2009 that brought him to a family in South Jersey and gave him the opportunity to fine-tune his English.

Richard A. Weinberg, 80, of Upper Providence, a dermatologist who practiced in Delaware County for more than 40 years and had a passion for photography, died Sunday, Feb. 3, of cancer at his home. Dr. Weinberg, who opened a medical office on Sproul Road in Springfield in 1964, incorporated his love of photography in his practice. The walls of his waiting room were filled with his photographs. Specializing in nature photography, Dr. Weinberg enjoyed capturing the beauty of the outdoors and often spent hours taking photos at Tyler Arboretum in Media and Ridley Creek State Park in Upper Providence.

John J. Mikuta, 88, a longtime medical professor and clinician at the University of Pennsylvania and a pioneer in the diagnosis and treatment of gynecological cancers, died Friday, Jan. 25, at the Medford Leas retirement community. Dr. Mikuta grew up in Scranton and came to Penn to study medicine. Aside from a stint as a U.S. Army doctor between his internship and residency, he never really left. He earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at Penn, did all his postgraduate training there, and went on to head Penn's Division of Gynecologic Oncology - a specialty he helped create.

PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL - Flames raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing more than 230 people as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead. It appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade. Witnesses said that a flare or firework lit by band members started the blaze in Santa Maria, a university city of about 225,000 people, though officials said that the cause was still under investigation.

When patient Carmello Torres walks into the clinic examining room at Cooper University Hospital, he knows the drill. First-year medical student Sara Zaidi, dressed in a white lab coat with a statoscope hanging from her neck, has seen him twice in the previous two months. Torres, 55, sits on the examining table, ready to answer questions about his acid reflux and a new health issue: His left hand, broken five years ago, is causing him intense pain at night. Zaidi, a member of the inaugural class at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, looks forward to her days at the Camden Community Collaborative Practice, a free health-care clinic the school sponsors for uninsured Camden residents.

A son of Camden returned Tuesday to call on students of the city's new medical school to attack the racial, socio-economic, and cultural health gaps that surround them. The message-bearer, George C. Hill, only recently retired as a medical professor and researcher at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he was responsible for promoting diversity. In a lecture at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, Hill said the school must work to address the health disparities that persist throughout communities like Camden.

Leon Paul Weiss, 87, of Merion, former chairman of the department of animal biology at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, died Tuesday, Oct. 16, at home surrounded by his wife and children. He had been in ill health and died of pneumonia. Dr. Weiss was a medical doctor who spent his career in research, teaching, and writing, focusing his work on cells and tissues of the immune system and the hematopoietic organs, which produce blood. After serving in the Army Medical Corps, Dr. Weiss taught at the medical schools at Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities.

Question: A close friend and I are entering health science careers via graduate school. We are pretty competitive individuals, and she puts a lot of her competitive emphasis on the academic realm. She is going through medical school now, and I am going to school this spring for physical therapy. My problem is that she consistently, unintentionally dismisses my profession as easier than hers or less difficult to get into. The fact is, many universities are seeing more applications for physical therapy than for their medical programs, for fewer available slots.