News Blog

For the last six months, most of us have been spending a lot more time at home, thanks to stay-at-home orders and the continued recommendations for safety to minimize COVID-19 exposure in the community.

Much of the world, including research at Penn Medicine, has focused its attention on how T cells — which play a central role in immune response — might shape the trajectory of COVID-19 infection, and how immunotherapy can shed light on treatment of the disease.

For 80 rising fourth-year medical students eager to play their part in the pandemic, the path forward was clear — educate themselves, fast. But with the news updating by the minute and their go-to experts and mentors also trying to catch up, where would they even begin?

A new initiative hopes to address the disparities in diversity in neuroscience — Black in Neuro. Debuted on Twitter this summer, the initiative was organized by 22 graduate students, postdocs and professionals from universities and institutions around the world to highlight Black excellence in the field.

In facing COVID-19, clinicians at least have the benefit of knowing the identity of the enemy they face, but the unknowns — a lack of a cure, what the best treatment course is, how much worse things can get — are similar to those Beck-Dougherty encountered in 1976.

Why does COVID-19 cause some patients to lose their sense of smell and taste? What are the psychiatric and neurological complications now associated with COVID-19 infections—and can these issues be prevented?

Rituals like funerals, shivas and memorial celebrations can often help ease the pain associated with the death of a loved one and allow those left behind to begin healing. But due to social distancing requirements to stem the spread of the virus, the pandemic has forced many people to change the way they say goodbye, complicating the grieving process, though making it no less important.

Whether or not people are actually avoiding going to the doctor when they’re sick — or to the hospital if they’re having a true emergency — is still a matter of some debate. But while no study has shown it definitively, there are two trends that are cause for concern.

While interpersonal challenges and difficult personalities at work have always been part of the professional picture, the changing dynamics of how we work, and our reactions have added additional complexity.

While Chester County Hospital’s leadership organized its COVID-19 response strategy, Sowti, was in frequent contact with his counterparts at PMC offering whatever support they needed to meet the high volume of COVID-19 patients they were seeing.