Penn Medicine Physician Jill M. Baren To Lead Society for Academic Emergency Medicine

Newswise — Jill M. Baren, MD, MBE, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, will on Saturday, May 16 become president of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, the nation's largest organization devoted to research and education in the specialty. An expert in emergency care, the subspecialty of pediatric emergency medicine and medical ethics, Baren will lead 5,000 national and international members at a time when emergency physicians face new challenges in caring for the growing elderly and uninsured populations in emergency rooms where staff and resources are strained by crowding.

Among issues Baren will address during her yearlong tenure: a study of the potential effects of a regionalized emergency care system modeled after the one that delivers trauma patients to hospitals that meet specific care benchmarks, and work to raise the profile of emergency physicians to boost federal funding of emergency research. With the establishment of two new society task forces, "Aging and Generational Issues in Academic Emergency Medicine" and "Resident as Researcher," she also aims to enhance the development of young medical talent and better equip these new physicians to care for patients in an environment that is rapidly changing through new technologies, health care reform and increased reliance on emergency departments for routine and chronic condition care.

"We need to face the fact that young physicians learn and access information differently than the previous generation," Baren says. "We need to know how to accommodate these learning differences so we can continue to train highly successful academic emergency physicians and to sustain high quality academic emergency departments within medical schools."

A graduate of Brown University and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Baren leads emergency clinical trials in pediatric and adult patients to investigate new therapies for acute neurological emergencies locally and nationally. She cares for patients at both the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She also holds a master's degree in bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania, and has lectured and written on informed consent issues in emergency medicine research and bioethical issues in resuscitation. Before coming to Penn in 1997, Baren served on the faculty at the Yale University School of Medicine and taught at ULCA School of Medicine, where she completed her emergency medicine and pediatric emergency medicine training.

PENN Medicine is a $3.6 billion enterprise dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. PENN Medicine consists of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Penn's School of Medicine is currently ranked #3 in the nation in U.S.News & World Report's survey of top research-oriented medical schools; and, according to the National Institutes of Health, received over $366 million in NIH grants (excluding contracts) in the 2008 fiscal year. Supporting 1,700 fulltime faculty and 700 students, the School of Medicine is recognized worldwide for its superior education and training of the next generation of physician-scientists and leaders of academic medicine.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) includes its flagship hospital, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, rated one of the nation's top ten "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S.News & World Report; Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation's first hospital; and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, named one of the nation's "100 Top Hospitals" for cardiovascular care by Thomson Reuters. In addition UPHS includes a primary-care provider network; a faculty practice plan; home care, hospice, and nursing home; three multispecialty satellite facilities; as well as the Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse campus, which offers comprehensive inpatient rehabilitation facilities and outpatient services in multiple specialties.