• Excellence in action: Employee recognized for outstanding care
  Every day, MGHers go beyond the call of duty — in ways both large and small — to provide patients and visitors compassion, comfort and reassurance at an often stressful time in their lives. To honor these employees, Peter L. Slavin, MD, president of the MGH, has created the Excellence in Action awards, which is a program that recognizes MGHers — both clinicians and nonclinicians — for their continuous commitment to providing the best possible patient care.

• Black History Month celebrated through music and dance
  The WACC Lobby resonated with the sounds of pounding music, stamping feet and bursts of applause at a Black History Month music and dance tribute, held Feb. 23 and sponsored by the Association of Multicultural Members of Partners (AMMP).

• MGH caregivers take a stand for patients' rights
  When retail giant Wal-Mart announced Feb. 14 that it would begin to stock Plan B — the so-called morning-after pill — at its 44 Massachusetts pharmacy stores, it did so in part as a result of the efforts of two MGH staff members who were concerned about their patients' rights to have access to the medication. Julie Battel, CNM, a nurse midwife with the MGH Vincent Memorial Obstetrics and Gynecology Service, and Rebekah Gee, MD, MPH, an obstetrics and gynecology resident in the MGH/BWH combined residency program, were two of the three plaintiffs who brought a lawsuit against Wal-Mart Feb. 1.

• MGH Revere patients get access to more mammography services
  Mammography services recently have been expanded at the MGH Revere HealthCare Center, giving MGH patients in the Revere, Everett and Winthrop areas increased access to an important screening tool that can detect early stages of breast cancer. The health center's mammography services, operated by MGH Radiology, feature the latest digital technology and offer the same high-quality care given by the Radiology staff at the main campus.

• Seminar series launched with focus on patient and family involvement in care
  With a mission of improving primary care practice by focusing on the relationship between patients, their families and clinicians, the Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation and the Ambulatory Practice of the Future (APF) project launched their 2006 seminar series Feb. 22 with a guest expert in providing patient- and family-centered care.

• ADHD stimulant may be less subject to abuse
  An MGH research team has found that a delayed-release stimulant used to treat ADHD may be less likely to be abused than other stimulant drugs. Study participants taking therapeutic oral doses of Concerta — a once-daily form of the drug methylphenidate — did not report perceiving and enjoying the drug's effects, features that are associated with a medication's potential for abuse. The report appears in the March 2006 issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry.

• Jain receives Distinguished Service Award
  Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, director of the Edwin L. Steele Laboratory of Tumor Biology at the MGH Department of Radiation Oncology, recently received the Distinguished Service Award at the Nature Biotechnology journal's Annual Winter Symposium in Miami, Fla. The award recognizes exceptional contributions to science that have helped biological research and its practitioners to advance such work more broadly.

• What's Happening

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