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MUSC Psychiatry Chair Update
Thomas W. Uhde, M.D.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Institute of Psychiatry |
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ONGOING STUDIES & PUBLICATIONS |
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UPDATED UNIVERSITY DIRECTIVES |
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Please click the button below for updated University Directives for MUSC Faculty, Staff, and Students (effective 01/13/21). |
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We have received a few emails asking about the mask policy. This information is referenced in Section A of the link above.
As we have been told, even with the vaccine, we must continue to wear a mask, socially distance, and practice good hand hygiene.
Please visit the MUSC Horseshoe for the latest on COVID-19.
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Delegates Needed to Serve on COM Faculty Council
The Faculty Council serves an important advisory role to the Dean on issues of faculty, staff, trainee, and student development. Delegates come from all departments, and each serve a 3-year term. See here for additional information and Faculty Council Charter. Replacement delegates are needed from the following departments (each department needing 1 additional delegate unless otherwise noted):
- Anesthesia
- Biochemistry
- Medicine (x2)
- Microbiology and Immunology
- Neurology
- OB/GYN
- Otolaryngology
- Pediatrics
- Psychiatry
By charter, eligibility to serve on Faculty Council is open to any faculty member who is: a) in good standing, b) for at least 24 months, c) > 0.75 FTE, and d) does NOT hold any leadership role within the department that might involve faculty contracts and/or budgets. Delegates should consult with their Departmental Chair for eligibility and approval, and should contact Dr. Matthew Carpenter, Chair of Nominations and Elections Committee if interested in serving.
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Study shows racial disparities in elementary school disciplinary actions
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Even after accounting for differences in income, education, caregiver support, special education services and parental reports of misbehavior and family conflict, elementary school-age Black children are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended or placed in detention than their white peers, a new study finds.
The results were unsettling even to the researchers themselves, who were familiar with previous research into racial disparities in school discipline. Previous studies primarily used school records, but this study was able to use a nationwide self-reported dataset, with data collected as part of a long-term investigation into how the brain develops through the preteen and teen years into early adulthood.
Because they had so much data on the participants, the researchers could do what previous studies could not and control for factors that are thought to account for discipline problems, like socioeconomic status and levels of family conflict.
And, in fact, those factors did even out the discipline disparities between white and Hispanic children; however, they couldn’t account for the discipline disparities between white and Black children. Among study participants, before factoring in those controls, 3% of white children and 15.2% of Black children received a detention or suspension in the past year.
“We were alarmed about how strong the findings were,” said co-first author Matthew Fadus, M.D. “Even when we controlled for many of these predictors of school discipline such as family income and education, the disparities remained.”
“With all of those factors controlled for, there has to be something else accounting for the differences in discipline rates,” Fadus said. He said that racism or unconscious bias is likely at the root of the higher discipline rates for Black children. In their paper, the researchers note that the problem goes beyond individuals’ actions.
“We believe that the findings of this study as a whole are not reflective of individual behaviors and responsibility from youth, but instead are the result of a long history of societal inequities and systemic racism,” they said.
Fadus, now with the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, and co-first author Emilio Valadez, Ph.D., now with the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland, College Park, were both working as trainees at the Medical University of South Carolina with co-senior author Lindsay Squeglia, Ph.D., of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, when they began developing the report.
Squeglia is a principal site investigator on the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, or ABCD, study. Conducted at 21 sites across the United States, the ABCD study recruited more than 11,000 children, ages 9 and 10, with the expectation of conducting brain scans, in-depth interviews, psychological tests and cognitive tasks over the course of 10 years to chart typical brain development. The anonymized data is then available to researchers around the world to use to explore social, psychological, neurological and biological questions. Only a few years into the study, the first batches of data have already yielded insights into the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure, parental depression, and neighborhood poverty.
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Safety Heroes: Christie Harley, RN II and Abby Teachey, RN II
2 North Child/Adolescent Psychiatric Unit
A patient was admitted from an outside hospital and sent to the inpatient child/adolescent psychiatric unit on 2 North Institute of Psychiatry in Charleston for psychosis and altered mental status. The patient did not have a past psychiatric or medical history. Upon arrival to the unit, the patient was obtundent with urinary incontinence, fever and tachycardia. Both nurses, Christie Harley and Abby Teachey, reported this to on-call MD who came and assessed the patient, and cleared her to stay on the unit. The patient had been previously diagnosed with a UTI, which concerned both Christie and Abby for urosepsis. The lab values for the patient were abnormal: White Blood Cell count 18,000 (had been 13,000 the day before), and hemoglobin of 8. Ultimately, the MD agreed and transferred the patient to the emergency department. Shortly after arrival to the ED the patient was accepted to the pediatric intensive care unit. Thanks to the advocacy from both Christie and Abby the patient was able to receive the medical care needed to prevent further harm.
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Drs. Eva Serber and Wendy Balliet were interviewed by Lowcountry Live regarding their collaboration with the American Heart Association's (AHA) Go Red Campaign. The AHA’s signature women’s initiative, Go Red for Women, is a comprehensive platform designed to increase women’s heart health awareness and serve as a catalyst for change to improve the lives of women globally. |
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SPRING CYCLE FOR PROMOTION & TENURE |
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For anyone who is requesting promotion or tenure effective January 1, 2022, all promotion and tenure requests must be received in the Chair’s office no later than February 4, 2021, in the form of complete packets accompanied by a letter of recommendation from your Division Director. Packets with checklists, requests for materials, and forms specific for regular and modified faculty have been developed to make the submission process more straightforward. Packets are available on the College of Medicine’s website. Please click the button below:
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Promotion to Associate Professor or Professor requires a minimum of four letters of recommendation, addressed to the Departmental Chair. Individuals selected to write the minimum four letters should be non-MUSC faculty in the candidate’s field at the academic rank of professor or its equivalent stature. At least two of these individuals should not be associated with the candidate by having been past mentors/teachers/students/trainees. We ask that you provide 4-6 names of individuals that we can contact to solicit letters of recommendation.
The letter of recommendation from your Division Director must follow appendix 2 in the COM APT guidelines. Division Director letters should include the following paragraphs: introductory, education, research if applicable, scholarly publications, clinical practice if applicable, administration, and other activities and accomplishments.
If you have any questions, please contact Kristen Mulholland at mulhollk@musc.edu. |
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3rd ANNUAL
MEDICAL CANNABIS CONFERENCE |
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3rd Annual Medical Cannabis Conference presented by the
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Office of Continuing Education
Full-Day Conference | January 29, 2021 |
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This activity has been approved for
AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™, American Psychological Association (APA) Continuing Education Credit, South Carolina Board of Examiners in Psychology Continuing Education Credit, The South Carolina Board of Examiners for Licensure of Professional Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists and Psycho-Educational Credits, and South Carolina Supreme Court Commission on Continuing Legal Education and Specialization has approved this activity.
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Please consider sending a Valentine’s Day card to our patients! Cards are distributed throughout the hospital. Only your first name will be included on the card. If you have any questions, please contact Jessica at cartejes@musc.edu.
Also, please consider donating $1 to our Friends of Mental Health fund. For every $5 we can do things like buy a bus pass for a patient, a teddy bear for a patient, or pill organizers for the elderly. We thank you for your support!
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A CONVERSATION WITH
HARRIET WASHINGTON |
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The Office of Student Programs and Student Diversity and the MUSC Student Government Association (D&I Committee) invites you to a thought-provoking moderated discussion with award-winning medical writer and editor, Harriet A. Washington, author of
Medical Apartheid.
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
5:15 p.m., hosted on Zoom
Register Here!
*The link to join the program will be sent to registrants 24 hours before the event.
As a medical ethicist, Harriet Washington has a unique and courageous voice and deconstructs the politics around medical issues. In addition to giving an abundance of historically accurate information on ‘scientific racism’, she paints a powerful and disturbing portrait of medicine, race, sex, and the abuse of power by telling individual human stories.
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- MUSC is using a new timekeeping system, effective Dec. 20, 2020
- All employees must review and approve their timecards biweekly, regardless of what their FLSA status is.
- An employee must review their biweekly time card reports to ensure accuracy. The designated timekeepers aren’t always aware of employees’ day-to-day schedule.
- All holidays must be reported in a timely fashion regardless if they’re taken or an employee is saving that holiday for another time.
- If an employee or supervisor can’t approve a certain timecard then they must sign the Delegation of Duty Form and give to their designated timekeeper.
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Addiction Sciences Division
Assistant Professor/Psychologist (UNIV, Full-Time): This position is for a clinical psychologist who will be working as a faculty member at the Medical University of South Carolina in the Outpatient Clinic of the Addiction Sciences Division of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, providing individual and group therapy to individuals with addiction-related and other psychiatric illnesses and their families.
Open Rank/Assistant Professor (UNIV, Full-Time): The successful applicant for this position will have either an MD or a PhD degree and will be expected to have an established and independent research program that will interface with the multidisciplinary NIAAA P50 Charleston Alcohol Research Center at MUSC.
Open Rank/Professor (UNIV, Full-Time): The successful applicant for this position will have either an MD or a PhD degree and will be expected to have an established and independent research program that will interface with the multidisciplinary NIAAA P50 Charleston Alcohol Research Center at MUSC.
Psychiatry Hospitalist Division
Open Rank - Psychiatry (UNIV, Full-Time): Candidate must be a psychiatrist with the ability to hold an unrestricted license to practice in South Carolina. The candidate must be board-eligible or board-certified if having completed residency training greater than five years ago. Candidate will be a member of the Psychiatry Hospitalist Division and provide inpatient care on a general adult psychiatry unit and provide coverage across other inpatient areas as needed. Candidate will provide care as a Consult Liaison, and have research coverage.
*Note: This position is coded under an ECT identifier through Human Resources; however, it is not ECT for doctors. This position is for the Psychiatry Hospitalist Division.
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Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science's
Executive Committee for Research and Research Administration (ECRRA) Announcement:
Special Issue Call for Papers: Impact of COVID-19 on Mental Health
COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on mental health across the world, both because of the direct effects of the virus on various facets of brain and immune function, as well as the effects of economic, social and life style disruption.
Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science (BP:GOS) plans a special issue devoted to understanding both the direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 on mental health across the world, with a particular focus on prospective biological predictors and outcomes that may mediate or moderate the relationship of COVID-19’s influence on mental health, as well as studies of the mechanisms by which COVID-19 infection or associated impacts contribute to new onset mental health challenges or exacerbate pre-existing conditions. Treatment studies that link directly to COVID-19 are also welcome. The
Journal is interested in empirical work or reviews focused on populations across the lifespan, as well as directly relevant animal work.
We invite submission for March 1, 2021, with a goal of publishing the special issue in August 2021. All submissions will be peer reviewed. Authors should indicate that the submission is intended for the special issue. For questions, contact the editorial office at BPGOS@sobp.org.
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Program for Researchers Affected by Pandemic
COVID-19 Voucher Program
The College of Medicine, Hollings Cancer Center, and South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute (SCTR) are pleased to offer a new funding opportunity open to all MUSC tenured and tenure track faculty members whose research has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Funding of up to $2,000 is available to help investigators gather preliminary data for inclusion in a grant proposal by covering the cost of supplies and/or core and laboratory services; pay for publication costs; or develop a translational focus to their research. Vouchers cannot be used to fund computer purchases, PI or staff salary, or travel. These funds will be distributed through SCTR. A total of $200,000 is available to support these awards.
Who is eligible?
To be eligible to receive a voucher an individual must be a tenured or tenure-track faculty member and serve as PI on an active research grant. A faculty member can receive only one COVID voucher.
Apply
To apply for a voucher, select the COVID-19 Voucher Program in SPARCRequest. Awards will be made on a rolling basis until all funds are expended.
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The long-awaited COVID-19 vaccines have started arriving at MUSC Health. The vaccine is not mandatory, but it is highly encouraged. The COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force will be posting updates on the COVID-19 Vaccine intranet site, including information about the vaccine safety and efficacy, so our care team members can make an informed decision.
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LAB & TESTING OPTIONS
The following resource provides MUSC Health lab and testing options pertaining to COVID-19. Included on this page is information regarding drive-thru and “pop-up” mobile COVID testing locations, antibody or serology tests, drive-in lab and nurse visits, and original/classic lab testing.
MUSC Health Lab & Testing Options
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MANDATORY SELF-MONITORING
Due to the activity of COVID-19 within the hospital and community, all employees, residents, fellows and students within all MUSC entities are directed to begin daily self-monitoring for COVID-19 symptoms. This applies regardless of whether you have been working remotely on a full-time or intermittent basis.
You need to continue daily self-monitoring, even if symptoms are not present.
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TRAVEL BAN
As a reminder, the MUSC travel ban is still in effect. The policy on this ban can be found here. This ban is in effect until further notice and includes all MUSC-sponsored travel in all forms of transportation (planes, trains, automobiles, boats/ships, etc.).
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VOLUNTEER BAN
Given the COVID-19 pandemic and until further notice, all volunteers and observers are barred from participation in departmental and MH-ICCE based activities. If there are circumstances wherein this policy causes a significant and critical issue, it should be brought to my attention for consideration of a written waiver (on an individual basis) of this policy.
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UPDATES VIA THE HORSESHOE
In addition to updates provided by MUSC Enterprise, the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences will also provide updates through our employee intranet, The Horseshoe. Updates will be provided regularly as new information becomes available. For your convenience, direct links are provided below.
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RESEARCH DELEGATION OF AUTHORITY
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE |
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MUSC recently established a Delegation of Authority (DOA) Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to promote efficient and compliant human subject research administration. The SOP describes MUSC’s signature and delegation of responsibilities process and discusses which study staff should be listed on the DOA.
This information has been added to the Research Webpage under Policies and Guidelines for reference.
Please join us for an SCTR Lunch and Learn training scheduled for Thursday, January 28th, 2021 from 12:00-1:00 p.m. (TODAY) to learn more about MUSC’s New Delegation of Authority SOP.
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FACULTY RESEARCH GRANT
SUPPORT SURVEY |
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The Executive Committee for Research and Research Administration is interested in better understanding grant administrative support within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in order to identify any areas for improvement in our current research infrastructure. We want to identify what is working well, challenges, and recommendations for improvements/changes that could be made to support our Department’s research mission. Of note, we are interested in feedback related to overall assistance and infrastructure support, not specific personnel issues. This survey should take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete.
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HOLLINGS CANCER CENTER
CLINICAL SCHOLARS PROGRAM |
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Hollings Cancer Center is accepting applications for its Clinical Scholars Program until January 29, 2021. The HCC Clinical Scholar Program is an exciting opportunity for clinically and research active MDs and MD/PhDs spanning a range of cancer-related specialties. Funding for new scholars will begin July 1, 2021.
The Program is specifically intended to provide outstanding assistant professors or recently appointed (less than two years) associate professors dedicated time to focus on cancer-related clinical investigations. Clinical Scholars will receive 20% salary funding for up to two years and an additional $5,000 in discretionary funding for research-related purposes.
Eligibility: Any MD or MD/PhD who is an assistant or recently appointed (less than two years) associate professor, treats cancer patients, and wishes to focus on clinical cancer research is eligible to apply for a Clinical Scholar Award.
For more information and/or to apply, please go to www.hollingscancercenter.org/research/funding/clinical/index.html
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2021 DART SUMMER RESEARCH |
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NEUROCOVID RECOVERY & REHAB RESEARCH STUDY RECRUITMENT |
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Testing a Wearable Telemedicine-controllable
taVNS Device for NeuroCovid Recovery and Rehab
Researcher: Mark George, M.D.
PRO Number: pro00101270
The purpose of the research is to test out a new form of treatment where we stimulate a nerve in your ear. This is called transcutaneous (through the skin) auricular (ear) vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) which means that you will receive stimulation through the ear. The taVNS device looks like an ear bud you would use with your smart phone or computer. We are investigating whether or not taVNS can treat neurologic symptoms of COVID-19 which are termed NEUROCOVID. Some symptoms you may experience are new onset anxiety, depression, vertigo, loss of smell, headaches, fatigue, irritability, etc. This study is entirely online and all assessments will be completed virtually.
Recruitment Contact
Sarah Huffman
843-876-5141
huffmans@musc.edu
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ENTERPRISE DIVERSITY & INCLUSION TRAINING SESSIONS - VIRTUAL |
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Please see the calendar below for a list of diversity & inclusion offerings from the Office of Training and Intercultural Education.
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INCORPORATING SEX AS A BIOLOGICAL VARIABLE (SABV) WORKSHOPS |
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UNDERSTANDING LEGAL ISSUES CONFERENCE |
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COVID-19 RESILIENCY CLINIC |
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NAMI CONNECTION & NAMI FAMILY SUPPORT |
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NAMI Connection and NAMI Family Support Offered Online
Social distancing does not mean that you have to go through difficult times alone. NAMI is here to help! We are offering NAMI Family Support and NAMI Connection online.
NAMI Connection Support is offered every Monday at 6PM until further notice.
NAMI Family Support Group is offered the 2nd and 4th Thursdays
of the month at 6PM until further notice.
By clicking HERE you can sign up to receive the meeting login information or you can email us at info@namicharlestonarea.org or call/text 843-284-3091. |
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UPDATED MOONLIGHTING POLICY |
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COMPREHENSIVE PSYCHIATRIC
CARE SPECIALISTS (CPCS) |
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THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS |
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If you would like to submit content to include in next week's Chair Update, please submit to Dr. Jamie Fisher by 12:00 pm on Monday. Thank you. |
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