Compiled by Beth Puliti

Madonna Rehab Names Dr. Burnfield Director

Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital, Lincoln, NE, is pleased to announce the promotion of Judith M. Burnfield, PhD, PT, to director of the Institute for Rehabilitation Science and Engineering. Dr. Burnfield will lead the research and technology programs of Madonna's three Centers for Excellence: Communication, Movement and Neurosciences and Clinical Informatics.

Dr. Burnfield brings 20 years of advanced rehabilitation research and practice. She has held faculty positions at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and Creighton University in Omaha.

Before joining Madonna, Dr. Burnfield was a leading researcher for Los Amigos Research and Education Institute in Downey, CA, and served as a research physical therapist and interim director of the physical therapy department of Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center.

Burnfield earned her doctoral degree in biokinesiology from USC and completed her post-doctoral training with Jacquelin Perry, MD, ScD, in the Pathokinesiology Laboratory at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center. She has a bachelor of science degree, cum laude, from State University of New York, Buffalo, NY.

Dr. Burnfield has published numerous journal articles and provided presentations across the country and internationally regarding analysis of gait dysfunction, rehabilitation technology and research. This year, she received a $598,000 grant to develop a new exercise therapy device and control system to help individuals with physical limitations improve walking ability, physical fitness and quality of life.

"Madonna is a jewel among rehabilitation hospitals," said Dr. Burnfield. "Patients at Madonna are getting the benefits of cutting-edge research today, instead of having to wait for studies being done elsewhere."

Mercy College Hosts Seminar

Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, NY, recently hosted a free seminar designed to provide information on the latest research in safe patient handling and movement to local health care workers and students.

More than 40 participants, including nurses, physical therapists and occupational therapists from all over the metropolitan area, attended a lecture given by an internationally recognized expert in safe patient handling and movement research and took part in a lab that included demonstrations of some of the newest equipment in the medical field.

This event provided Mercy's students and neighbors with important information that will improve safety for health care providers and patients.

"Safe patient handling is receiving more and more attention from nurses and other health care professionals," said assistant professor Marc Campo, a physical therapy instructor at Mercy and the event's organizer. "However, clinicians in rehabilitation, including physical therapists and occupational therapists, have traditionally not been involved in this movement. We hope that this seminar was a first step in introducing safe patient handling concepts to clinicians from the local area. We hope to build on this seminar with additional courses, meetings and research."

This was the first time a seminar of this kind was held at Mercy. Safe patient handling and movement expert Andrea Baptiste, an ergonomist and biomechanics lab manager at the Patient Safety Center of Inquiry in Tampa, FL, provided attendees with a variety of useful information related to the risks associated with manual handling of patients; injury rates in nursing, occupational therapy and physical therapy; advances in safe patient handling technology; and successful solutions for safe patient handling.

PTW Celebrates Five Years of Excellence

The Physical Therapy & Wellness Institute (PTW), located in Lansdale, PA, hosted a well-attended "Community Health & Wellness" event to celebrate five years of excellence in serving the central Montgomery County area in Pennsylvania.

To mark the occasion, Michael DiNunzio, Mayor of Lansdale, delivered a proclamation praising PTW for their outstanding service in the areas of recuperative care and medically based exercise.

The "Community Health & Wellness" open house was also a celebration of the opening of PTW's new addition. Guests at the open house were given tours of the new facility that is now home to an expanded "Medically Based Exercise" program. The new addition provides an additional 1,500 square feet to the Lansdale location, bringing the total to 6,500 square feet for the building. This makes PTW the largest free-standing physical therapy office in the central Montgomery county area.

The expanded, one-story footprint has greatly enhanced accessibility to certain exercise equipment—a move that has been especially beneficial for patients with ambulatory challenges. Both patients and staff have also found the improved proximity to bi-angular resistive equipment and other resources, down to the freezer for ice packs, to be a real benefit.

Further, bringing the two areas together on one plane allows for a more cohesive work environment, where the physical therapists and exercise physiologists on PTW's staff are able to communicate more effectively. The direct result has been improvement in the area of customer service, with patients receiving treatment more rapidly than in the past.

Other highlights of the event included a medical seminar on the aging shoulder, presented by Peter Wang, MD, of North Penn Orthopaedic Associates. More than 20 event attendees took advantage of the opportunity to listen to Dr. Wang speak about age-related shoulder issues and many stayed following the speech to ask Dr. Wang questions about their own conditions.

Another highlight of the PTW open house was a check presentation to the North Penn Valley Boys & Girls club. Robert Babb presented Cathy Shipp, NPVBGC executive director, with an oversized check in the amount of $500 to be used toward the purchase of sports equipment, including flag football uniforms, youth footballs, kick balls and more.

Shepherd Center Celebrates 25 Years of Quality Care

Shepherd Center of Atlanta is celebrating 25 years of being designated a Model System of Care for spinal cord injuries, a prestigious hallmark given by the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). The catastrophic care hospital is one of only 14 Model Systems in the country.

To be designated a Model System, a facility must undergo a rigorous application process to show it meets high standards for multidisciplinary care, long-term follow-up, and collaborative and site-specific research. The facility also must collect, manage and analyze data on patients during and after treatment.

Shepherd must re-apply for the designation every five years and was again named a Model System of Care in 2006. The hospital will receive $2 million from NIDRR for research during the current term.

Shepherd was only seven years old when it first applied for the Model System of Care designation in 1982. The Center had just moved from rented space to its current location on Peachtree Road, and it was virtually unheard of for an organization so young to receive the designation.

"Getting this designation was huge," said Lesley M. Hudson, MA, Shepherd's clinical research manager and co-director of the Georgia Model Spinal Cord Injury System project. Hudson wrote the original application. "Being named a Model System of Care gave us credibility and put us on the map nationally and internationally."

The continuum of care Shepherd patients receive is the core component of the designation. As part of the grant, Shepherd Center has trained first responders in Georgia in taking the initial critical steps to maximize recovery. That focus continues during rehabilitation and after discharge.

"The fact that we've consistently received the designation demonstrates our commitment to maintaining a full line of service from injury to a lifetime of follow up," said David Apple, Jr., MD, Shepherd's medical director emeritus. "The patients know they will get the latest in treatment and that we are consistently trying to improve upon outcomes of the injury."

Hudson and Apple agree that earning Model System status laid the groundwork for Shepherd to build its top-notch research department with a national reputation.

The next application for renewal is due in March 2011. Hudson estimated that as many as 36 hospitals will compete for the 14 available slots. "The odds are in our favor, but we can't sit back and expect it," she said.

Fundraiser Benefits Women's Health Foundation

Women's Health Foundation founder and executive director Missy Lavender congratulates speaker Holly Herman, PT, on her presentation for the standing-room-only crowd at the recent "Sex, Chocolate & Your Pelvic Floor" fundraiser to benefit the Foundation.

Herman, a Cambridge, MA-based pioneer in the field of women's health, has devoted 30 years to train medical professionals to help women improve their urologic, gynecologic, obstetric, colorectal, orthopedic and sexual function.

Among the event's attractions for the more than 100 women in attendance were food, fun, champagne and education about women's pelvic and sexual health through lively conversation with leading experts in the field. The event was sponsored by Kimberly-Clark and Pfizer.