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OCTOBER PROGRAMS ANNOUNCED FOR THE MEDICAL CENTER HOUR

The University of Virginia School of Medicine's Medical Center Hour will continue its 2000-2001 weekly series on Wednesday, October 4, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., in the Jordan Conference Center Auditorium.

Founded in 1971 by former dean of the U.Va. School of Medicine, Dr. Thomas H. Hunter, the Medical Center Hour explores current issues and controversies facing medicine and society, including topics in contemporary health care, culture, ethics, religion, law, scientific research and public policy. The weekly forum, produced by the U.Va. Program of Humanities in Medicine, is held on Wednesdays from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Jordan Conference Center Auditorium. All programs are free and open to the public.

    October 4, Race Matters in Pain Control. Dr. Richard Payne, chief of the pain and palliative care center and professor of neurology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, will pay special attention to the differential treatment of African-Americans and other medically underserved minorities in both the perception and treatment of pain. Payne appeared on the recent PBS series On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying, on September 11. Responding to Payne's remarks will be Dr. Marcus Martin, chairman of emergency medicine at the U.Va. Health System. In an editorial for the January 2000 Emergency Medicine, Martin discussed ethnic differences in pain tolerance and inquired about inequalities of treatment along racial lines. This program is co-presented with the Cancer Center, the Center for Palliative Care and the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the U.Va. Health System.
    October 11, (McLeod Hall Auditorium), Improving Pain Management – An Ongoing Journey. Christine Miaskowski, R.N., Ph.D., FAAN, professor and chairman of the department of physiological nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, will address the under treatment of acute and chronic pain in the United States. She will discuss the harmful effects of unrelieved pain on cancer patients and their family caregivers, the effectiveness of nurse-administered intervention to improve cancer pain management and differences in pain relief attributable to gender. This program is co-presented with the U.Va. School of Nursing. The discussion commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Zula Mae Baber Bice Memorial lecture series.
    October 18, Physicians' Conflicts of Loyalty. Dr. M. Gregg Bloche, J.D., professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and adjunct professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, will look at ways in which physicians are finding themselves in conflict over loyalty to patients and obligations to society and third-party payors such as managed-care organizations. Responding to Bloche's remarks will be Dr. Walter Davis, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation and director of education at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the U.Va. Health System. This program is co-presented with the U.Va. Institute for Practical Ethics and the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the U.Va. Health System.
    October 25, Traditional Tibetan Medicine and Models of Optimal Health. B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D., who teaches religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will explain the theoretical and spiritual foundations of traditional Tibetan medicine and the holistic – physical, spiritual and mental – approaches to health that are practiced by traditional Tibetan physicians and their patients. Responding to Wallace's remarks will be Dr. Leslie J. Blackhall, associate professor of medicine at the University of Southern California. This program is a Spirituality and Medicine Medical Center Hour and is co-presented with U.Va.'s Center for South Asian Studies.

September 28, 2000