February 2007In 1983, Richard Sowell was studying for his master's degree at the Medical College of Georgia and working at Grady Memorial Hospital on the weekends. He remembers a co-worker telling him that one of "those" patients was in the hospital and on his ward.
"I didn't even have to ask what she meant. Health officials all over Atlanta had been talking about this new infectious disease that was killing gay men, and quickly. No one knew what caused it, and the speculations created a different panic almost every week," said Sowell, now dean of the College of Health and Human Services at Kennesaw State University. Full Article
To the uninitiated, it seems like a risky business: putting a small child with cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis or other neuromusculoskeletal problems on a 1,500-pound horse.
The practice - called hippotherapy, after the Greek word for horse - was started by physical therapists in Germany, Switzerland and Austria in the 1960s. American therapists have been doing it since the 1970s and established a standardized curriculum in the 1980s. In 1994, the American Hippotherapy Association began training and registering therapists in the specialty. Full Article
In 1967, Felisa Herring was selected to participate in an exchange visitor nurses program that brought 11 nurses from the Philippines to work at University Hospital in Birmingham. The purpose was to have the group learn American nursing practices for two years and take them back to their homeland.
"I wanted a challenge, and that's why I came," said Herring, RN, BSN, CPN. "I was proud of being selected. It was what so many of us had dreamed of - practicing in America, where everything was modern and people enjoyed the highest standards [of health care and living]." Full Article