Biography

Barbara Bates further developed the role of the nurse-practitioner, and wrote a guide to patient history-taking that has become the standard text for health practitioners and medical students. Her book, Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking, first published in 1974, has been published in several revised editions and includes a twelve-part video supplement, A Visual Guide to Physical Examination. Bates grew up in Auburn, New York, where her father was a general surgeon, and her mother a registered nurse. She decided to pursue a medical career while in her junior year at Smith College. She attended Cornell University Weill Medical College and got her M.D. degree in 1953. Dr. Bates stayed on at New York Hospital and Cornell Medical College until 1958, when she joined an internal medicine practice in Greenwich, Connecticut. In 1961 she was recruited to join the faculty at the new University of Kentucky College of Medicine, a school intended to provide physicians and better medical care to the underserved Appalachian region. The school aimed to build a cooperative, team-oriented approach to care among physicians, nurses, and social workers. In 1967, Dr. Bates moved to the University of Rochester School of Medicine, to oversee the training of medical residents and to participate in the Rochester Regional Medical Care Program in western New York. In Rochester, she became an activist in interdisciplinary practice, further developing the then new role of nurse-practitioner, and working to improve access to primary health care services through interdisciplinary practice. She became well known as an outstanding professor of medicine, especially for her expertise in diagnosis and her ability to teach student doctors and nurses the skills of examination and clinical thinking. In 1970, realizing that the standard text used to teach physical examination was not user-friendly, she developed a guide to physical exam and history-taking for use by her nurse-practitioner students. Ten nurses and five physicians who met during the spring of 1970, and called themselves "The Clandestine Group," helped her with the project. The first guide was hand-drawn, and its organization was based on ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson's popular guides to American birds. Introductory chapters in Bates's book discuss interviewing techniques, the health history, common and important symptoms, and assessing the mental status of the patient. Specific chapters review anatomy and physiology, physical examination techniques, and selected abnormalities. Illustrated summary tables for each chapter are marked with red tabs for easy access. Aside from birdwatching, a hobby that inspired the structure of her guide, Dr. Bates had a deep interest in the history of medicine, and completed a master's degree in history at the University of Kansas in 1978. She published Bargaining for Life: A Social History of Tuberculosis 1876-1938 in 1992 after ten years of research and writing. Bates received recognition for her work in both medicine and history, receiving the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education in 1984, and the American Association for the History of Nursing Lavinia L. Dock Award for Historical Scholarship and

Research in 1993.

BURN UNIT REFERRAL CRITERIA

A burn unit may treat adults or children or both. Burn injuries that should be referred to a burn unit include the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Partial thickness burns greater than 10% total bodysurface area (TBSA) Burns that involve the face, hands, feet, genitalia, perineum, or major joints Third-degree burns in any age group Electrical burns, including lightning injury Chemical burns Inhalation injury

7. Burn injury in patients with preexisting medical disorders that could complicate management, prolong recovery, or affect mortality 8. Any patients with burns and concomitant trauma (such as fractures) in which the burn injury poses the greatest risk of morbidity or mortality. In such cases, if the trauma poses the greater immediate risk, the patient may be initially stabilized in a trauma center before being transferred to a burn unit. Physician judgment will be necessary in such situations and should be in concert with the

regional medical control plan and triage protocols. 9. Burned children in hospitals without qualified personnel or equipment for the care of children

10. Burn injury in patients who will require special social, emotional, or long-term rehabilitative intervention Excerpted from Guidelines for the Operations of Burn Units (pp. 55-62), Resources for Optimal Care of the Injured Patient: 1999, Committee on Trauma, American College of Surgeons.

Cardiac Procedures reported on this website include:

Coronary Artery Bypass Grafts (CABG) Heart valve replacement, repair, annuloplasty (surgical reconstruction of an incompetent cardiac valve) Atrial and ventricular septal defect Left ventricular aneurysm, left ventricular assistance device ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygentation-temporary support of heart and lung function by partial cardiopulmonary bypass) Pericardectomy (surgical excision of a part of the pericardium, or the membrane which encompasses the heart) Deep hypothermic cardiac arrests Trauma to heart Tumours of heart Resection of thoracic aorta vessels