Leticia Sowell, Patient Care Assistant, Cardiology Inpatient Unit, passed away on August 12, 2017 at the age of 41.
Leticia loved caring for patients on the West Tower 15 Cardiology Inpatient Unit for nine years.
Leticia leaves behind four children: Caylin, Mya, Warren and Niecy to cherish her memory.
Dr. William Pederson has been named the Samuel Stal, MD Endowed Chair in Plastic Surgery, and Dr. Edward Reece has been named the Josephine Abercrombie Endowed Professor in Plastic Surgery Research.
“Both Dr. Pederson and Dr. Reece are exceptionally worthy recipients of these endowed positions,” said Dr. Larry Hollier, associate surgeon-in-chief for clinical affairs and chief of Plastic Surgery at Texas Children’s Hospital, and chief of Plastic Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. “We are very fortunate to have received endowment funding from generous donors and hospital leadership in order to recruit and retain the most talented surgeons to care for our patients.”
The Samuel Stal, MD Endowed Chair in Plastic Surgery was created through the contributions of Texas Children’s Hospital to honor the legacy of Dr. Samuel Stal, who served as chief of Plastic Surgery at both Texas Children’s and Baylor College of Medicine. For more than 30 years, Dr. Stal focused his Texas Children’s practice on helping children with craniofacial, cleft lip and palate deformities. He also created the Texas Children’s Center for Facial Surgery, which accepted all children with facial deformities regardless of their family’s ability to pay.
Pederson is a highly regarded hand and microvascular surgeon with faculty appointments in plastic surgery, orthopedics, neurosurgery and pediatrics at Texas Children’s and Baylor. His clinical interests include the management of vascular problems in the upper extremity, nerve injury and repair including brachial plexus, Volkmann’s ischemic contracture, facial paralysis and microsurgical reconstruction of complex extremity defects.
A leader in his field, Pederson currently serves as president of the American Association for Hand Surgery. Pederson was named a director of the American Board of Plastic Surgery in 2013 and is the chair of the Board’s Hand Surgery Examination Committee. He also serves as a member-at-large on the executive council of the World Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery. He has served as president of the American Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery and has served on the executive council of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand.
Pederson has authored more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed literature and 40 textbook chapters. He is an editor of the textbook “Green’s Operative Hand Surgery,” and serves on the editorial boards of the “Journal of Hand Surgery” and the “Journal of Reconstructive Microsurgery.”
The Josephine Abercrombie Endowed Professorship in Plastic Surgery Research was established by Ms. Abercrombie’s son, George Robinson, to honor his mother and the Abercrombie legacy of giving to Texas Children’s and Baylor. J.S. Abercrombie, Josephine’s father, was one of the founders of Texas Children’s Hospital.
Reece is the chief of Adult Plastic Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. He specializes in plastic surgery and surgery of the hand. He is also a member of the Hand Surgery Program at Texas Children’s.
After earning a medical degree and Master’s degree in applied anatomical sciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Reece completed his plastic surgery residency at UT Southwestern in Dallas. He went on to train under Dr. David Green at UT San Antonio in hand surgery and microvascular reconstructive surgery. He also earned an Executive MBA degree with an additional certification in health care supply chain from Arizona State University.
Reece conducts research in the areas of peripheral nerves, reconstructive surgery and telehealth as it relates to improving doctor-patient interactions and coordinating efficient care and affordable cost. He has founded several biomedical companies that seek to find efficiency and cost savings for institutions while preserving the highest quality to patients.
This is the third endowed appointment for the Division of Plastic Surgery at Texas Children’s. Hollier holds the S. Baron Hardy Endowed Chair in Plastic Surgery. Dr. S. Baron Hardy was the first chief of Plastic Surgery at Texas Children’s. The endowment was gift from the T.L.L. Temple Foundation and was championed by Temple Webber, who serves as a T.L.L. Temple Foundation trustee.
Frances Mathews, Clerical Secretary, West Tower Post Anesthesia Care Unit, died July 22, 2017 at the age of 55.
Frances’ career in the medical field spanned over 25 years between Texas Children’s Hospital and St. Luke’s. She had a passion for singing and was the lead singer for Ms. Frances & The Rhythm Fish and The Works. She was a bold, sweet spirit with a big heart. Her smile could light up a room, and her laughter was contagious.
She is survived by two children, Ray and Cachet; four grandchildren, Jaeden, Angeloe, Rayven and Christian; father Rufus; four sisters and three brothers; many other relatives, friends and church members from The Fountain of Praise.
Creola “Gwen” Calhoun, Unit Clerical Assistant, Women’s Services, passed away on July 10, 2017 at the age of 61.
Creola Calhoun, affectionately known as Gwen by those who knew and loved her began her career at St. Luke’s Hospital in March of 1982 before transitioning to Texas Children’s Hospital with the Women’s Services department in 2006. For 35 years, Ms. Gwen served the Women’s Services team as a patient care assistant and a unit clerical assistant on the Labor & Delivery and Antepartum Unit. Throughout her tenure, Ms. Gwen built many long-lasting bonds and friendships that she honored and cherished.
Gwen leaves to cherish her precious memories two daughters, Yolanda (Michael) and Yvonne (Lavarvia); two sons, Stafford Sr. (Viola) and Daniel (Melody); four sisters, three brothers, four grandsons, two granddaughters, one great granddaughter, and other relatives, and friends who loved her dearly.
Texas Children’s work to develop a novel non-invasive device for pediatric ureteral stent removal after a urinary tract procedure, with Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) and Department of Bioengineering, as well as local life sciences commercialization firm Fannin Innovation Studio, was recently funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The $225,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant will be used to conduct further development of an electromagnetic device for removal of ureteral stents in pediatric patients.
Through the Rice undergraduate design program, a group of Rice University engineering students collaborated with Dr. Chester Koh, a pediatric urologist and surgeon at Texas Children’s and Baylor College of Medicine, to create the device in 2015, after Koh challenged the students to develop an innovative tool that would simplify ureteral stent removals, a fairly common procedure that is performed on more than 2,000 pediatric patients nationwide each year.
After extensively collaborating with Texas Children’s surgeons to better understand the challenges of the current procedure and the need for refinement, the collaborative team developed a non-invasive device to remove ureteral stents from children using a small magnetic bead and a powerful custom-built electromagnet that was designed with the assistance of 3-D printing at Rice’s OEDK labs. The electromagnet safely pulls on the tiny metallic bead that is attached to the ureteral stent to allow passage through the urethra without the need for an invasive procedure or general anesthesia.
This new innovation in pediatric ureteral stent removal is less painful and costs two-thirds less than the standard procedure because it avoids general anesthesia and the time and equipment necessary for a surgical procedure. The team’s invention has won two significant awards: the top prize at Rice University’s 2016 annual Engineering Design Showcase and the Grand Prize for Student Design at the 2016 annual Design of Medical Devices conference in Minneapolis.
“The development of pediatric medical devices lags adult device development by more than 10 years,” said Koh, who has a mechanical engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley. “This is an important example of why academic partnerships are needed to advance pediatric medical device projects, since the pediatric medical device pipeline is currently limited. I applaud the Rice and Fannin Innovation Studio team members for showing their dedication and passion to the kids under our care at Texas Children’s.”
Prior to coming to Texas Children’s to establish the robotic surgery program in 2013, Koh co-founded a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-supported pediatric device consortium based in Southern California. He is creating a similar initiative at Texas Children’s, drawing on the top engineering and device development talent in the region.
The early work for this project was supported by the Denton A. Cooley Fellowship for Surgical Innovation of the Texas Children’s Auxiliary and by the Texas Children’s Department of Surgery, which continues to support the pursuit of innovation solutions to the unmet surgical needs of children.
The SBIR Phase I grant from the NIDDK will allow the team to implement design modifications to further refine the device as well as perform benchtop and pre-clinical studies with a target goal of larger SBIR Phase II grants.
Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Scott McKay was recently named a recipient of the 2017 Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA) /Sociedad LatinoAmericana de Orthopedia Y Traumatologia Infantil (SLAOTI) Traveling Fellowship Award to South America.
McKay, alongside two other pediatric orthopedic surgeons, will spend the first two weeks of October in Argentina and Chile visiting and learning new techniques and exchanging ideas with their South American counterparts. The surgeons will end their trip in Brazil at the POSNA/SLAOTI meeting.
McKay, who specializes in injuries to the pediatric/adolescent athlete, was awarded the travel grant in March.
POSNA is a non-profit professional organization of over 1,200 surgeons, physicians and allied health members who are passionately dedicated to advancing musculoskeletal care for children and adolescents through education, research, quality, safety and value initiatives, advocacy, and global outreach to children in underserved areas.
The POSNA/SLAOTI annual traveling fellowship to South America allows three POSNA members a year to travel abroad and three members of an alliance society to tour in North America annually.
The Cardiology Patient Care Unit (CPCU) on 15 West Tower recently achieved a remarkable milestone – they reached 365 days and counting with zero central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI).
Since their last CLABSI on July 14, 2016, the CPCU team has worked diligently to follow the CLABSI and hygiene bundles to provide high quality care to the numerous patients they see daily with central line catheters.
Last fall, nurses collaborated with their infection control partners in education and vascular access to implement a massive educational initiative that trained more than 2,000 nurses across the organization on several key skills in central line care. By providing central line care support and education, the CPCU has been able to address concerns early before they potentially manifest into a bloodstream infection.
Congratulations to the CPCU team for their continued commitment to helping Texas Children’s cultivate an environment for safe patient care. The unit celebrated this huge accomplishment with a breakfast.