Safety Begins With You

Game players at the Safety Fair, held March 5 on the Broadway Corridor at Hopkins Hospital, tested their skills at identifying drugs, matching medications with written orders, and matching patients' names with those appearing on the OR schedule. It was not easy. Errors may be entrenched in systems, but a sharp eye, players discovered, can do worlds to avert mistakes.

Sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Patient Safety Committee and the Center for Innovations in Quality Patient Care at Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Safety Fair represented one more step in establishing safety as an organizational priority.

Celebrating Student Workers Like thousands of colleges and universities across the country, Hopkins will honor its student workers during National Student Employment Week, April 6-12. Two School of Medicine departments, Ophthalmology and Radiology, have put forth nominees for Student Employee of the Year. Students had until the end of March to nominate their supervisors for Employer of the Year. Winners will be announced at an annual awards ceremony at Homewood on April 7.

A Fine, First Place More than 3,000 babies enter the world every year at Howard County General Hospital, and those born in recent months are arriving in style. HCGH's new obstetric unit is more than double the size of the old unit, with 12 labor/delivery/recovery suites, two operating rooms for cesarean sections, two adjacent recovery rooms and three triage rooms. Roomy, light-filled accommodations, private bathrooms, TV, VCR and CD players have been a hit with parents. The new, level II neonatal intensive care unit, more than three times the size of the former unit, has 18 infant-care stations, each in its own alcove, and a separate isolation room. New parents can stay overnight in the "family nesting room" before discharge. Space is so vast that nurses who once worked elbow to elbow now use Spectra-link cell phones to stay in touch with one another. Photos of former and present staff with their children make the new unit feel like home. -Linda Caplan, labor and delivery nurse, HCGH

Totals Rise, A Beard Falls His grown daughters wept, but George Dover made good on his pledge to shave the beard he'd had for 33 years when Radiothon surpassed last year's total. This year's Radiothon, a four-day marathon that aired live from Feb. 27 to March 2 on MIX 1065 FM, brought in $1,030,582, beating last year's total by more than $30,000. When the check was presented, MIX 1065 morning show hosts shaved eight mylar balloons, each revealing a number in the total figure. The ninth and final number was on Dover's face, unmasked as the whiskers fell to the floor. MIX 1065 has sponsored Radiothon, which benefits patient care at the Children's Center, for the past 14 years, raising more than $5 million. "My beard was a small price to pay," Dover declared, "considering the Children's Center received more than a million dollars."

Everything Was Emotional Shrieks erupted in Turner Concourse, when, precisely at noon on Thursday, March 20, fourth-year medical students found out where they were headed for residency training. There were tears of joy and wild embraces, for it was Match Day. "This," said Dean Frank Herlong, "is one of the most important days in a medical student's life."