Last month, a special celebration was held to recognize and honor the 2,000 members of the Penn Medicine family who served in the military or continue to serve in Reserve or National Guard forces.
Helping to honor Penn Medicine veterans were Kevin Mahoney, executive VP and chief administrative officer; Neil Ravitz; L. Scott Levin; CEO Ralph Muller, and Secretary David Shulkin.
David Schulkin, MD, United States Secretary of Veteran Affairs, praised the relationships – research, clinical and educational – Penn Medicine has with the VA Hospital. “The VA has an obligation to care to veterans, and we can’t do that without partnerships, like Penn,” he said.
Noting that “Penn has always been committed to service to country,” he spoke about Penn surgeon I.S. Ravdin who led the 20th Army Hospital in Northeast India during World War II, staffed with 59 doctors and 120 nurses from Penn. “The hospital admitted 73,000 American and Allied soldiers.”
L. Scott Levin, MD, chair of Orthopaedic Surgery, spoke about his personal involvement with the military, starting with his grandfather, who received the French Legion of Honor in 1927. “Hippocrates said, ‘If you want to learn surgery, go to war.’ And sadly that’s true, but we’ve learned a lot. Doctors learned reconstructive plastic surgery in the trenches in World War I,” Levin said.
Levin, who himself served in the military “for love of country,” spoke of his passion for limb salvage and repair and reconstructive microsurgery of extremities and how techniques he has learned and passed on to others are now helping our injured service members recover and lead full lives.
The celebration ended with a special recognition of Neil Ravitz, chief operating officer of Orthopaedics, who was named a Veteran of Influence by Philadelphia Business Journal, an award which honors those who served their country with honor and are now making a difference in business.