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Proton Therapy Facilities

Proton therapy facilities will be constructed at Mayo Clinic campuses in Arizona and Minnesota. Each facility will have four proton beam treatment rooms equipped with pencil beam scanning and large machines (synchrotrons) for generating the proton beams.

Mayo is investing more than $370 million in the projects from Mayo's capital budget and benefactor support. Mayo's facilities are one of the few new proton therapy projects being financed by a medical center.

The treatment capacity of each four-room facility is expected to be about 138 patients a day, or about 1,240 patients each year.

During the building phase of each project, a total of 500 construction jobs will be created. When fully operational, the proton therapy program will employ more than 250 new staff members, including 22 doctors and 29 physicists.

The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
ARCHITECT'S RENDERING OF NEW PROTON BEAM THERAPY FACILITY IN ARIZONA.

Proton Beam Therapy Program — Arizona Campus

The proton therapy facility will be located east of the Mayo Clinic Specialty Building on the Phoenix campus.  The Arizona Proton Beam Therapy Program is expected to employ about 130 staff members, including 13 doctors and nine Ph.D. physicists.

About Mayo Clinic's Program

Mayo Clinic's Proton Beam Therapy Program is a new addition to the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, the only national cancer center with sites in Arizona, Florida, and Minnesota.

The program differs from most other proton therapy programs in the United States in that it will exclusively feature intensity-modulated proton beam therapy, using pencil beam scanning, an advance over current radiation and proton therapy methods because its beam conforms more closely to the tumor, better sparing surrounding healthy tissue from harm. All eight treatment rooms at Mayo Clinic's two facilities will feature this advanced technology.

The first treatment rooms will be available for patients in Rochester in the summer of 2015 and in Arizona in 2016. All eight treatment rooms will be operational by 2017.

Mayo's Facility

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THE SYNCHROTRON GENERATES AND ACCELERATES THE PROTON BEAM FOR THE TREATMENT ROOMS. RADIATION IS SYNCHRONIZED WITH THE PATIENT'S BREATHING.

Research

One of Mayo Clinic's priorities is to advance the science of proton therapy, which is still in its infancy. Mayo Clinic researchers at the two proton beam facilities will conduct joint clinical studies as a unified program. Clinical outcomes for all Mayo patients will be entered into one central database to improve care models and services for cancer patients. Mayo also plans to foster collaborative research with other centers worldwide.

The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.

By Jeff Proctor
Albuquerque Journal

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Her most visible project is Vest 'N Police Dog Protection, which, since the spring of 2002, has put protective body armor on nearly 600 police dogs in 41 states.

Jean runs the operation as a one-woman band out of her home in Socorro. The business depends largely on donations, although Jean has been trying for three years to get a bill passed at the Legislature that would change the purpose of the state's law enforcement protection fund to include protective equipment for dogs.

Had it not been for Max and Shadow - and Jean's love for the shepherds - the business would never have come to pass.

The whole thing started when she was living in Douglasville, Ga. It was spring 2002, a few months after the second of the two shepherds had died, and Jean was watching an episode of the popular Fox television show "America's Most Wanted."

"I saw this video of a K-9 officer running after a criminal, and the dog was shot," Jean said in an interview. "The dog just got right back up and knocked the criminal over before his handler arrived. The officer was just yelling: 'You shot my dog! You shot my dog!'

"Of course, by then, I was in tears - my dogs' passing was still very fresh. I just missed them so much; I still do. So I turned to my husband and said: 'These dogs aren't protected at all. I've got to do something.' "

Jean called her local police department and asked whether its two police dogs had protective vests. The answer was no, they're too expensive. So Jean went to work. She gathered donations and hooked up with a local supplier in Georgia who sold her the vests for half the usual price of $1,500 apiece. (The supplier has supported Jean's efforts ever since.) Pretty soon, the police department in Douglasville had two more dogs. Jean got them two more vests.

"From there, it just started to bloom," Jean said. "I was able to vest 64 police dogs before I moved to New Mexico in 2006." In the five years since, with the help of the launch of her website, Jean has continued to put vests on dogs.

The vests themselves are custom-fit after taking seven measurements from the dogs. German shepherds and Belgian Malinoiss are the most common dogs used in police work. Jean has gotten vests for hounds and Labrador retrievers, which are often used in drug detection work.

In addition to saving dogs' lives, the vests are a good economic investment, Jean said.

"It can cost up to $40,000 to train these dogs," she said. "And there's a lot of time invested, too: Officers are with their dogs 24/7. If one of them gets shot or stabbed, all of that is lost. So what's $700 to get one protected?"
Most police dogs, Jean said, serve for about five years - from age 3 to about 8.
Five years is exactly how long the vests last, she said.
Testimonials on her website tell stories of dogs who would not have survived had it not been for the vest.

Most of her focus is on Vest 'N Police Dog Protection, Jean said, which has been hit hard by the recent economic downturn. Still, she said New Mexico has been an ideal place from which to operate the business. "I'm an animal lover, and this is a real animal lover state," Jean said. "I'm retired now, and this is my opportunity to give something back. I do this project in memory of my dogs."

Copyright 2011 Albuquerque Journal

The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.

"Moments" An Evening with Bill W., a seminal piece on the founding of the A.A. Fellowship.

The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.

"Reflections" A Sunday Afternoon with Lois. The story of Al-Anon and the love between Lois and Bill. The play is set at the Wilson's home after the memorial service of William G. Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

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"Scapedream" Dr. Bob... Pure and Simple. The premise of the play is a dream that occurred minutes before the death of Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith, better known as Dr. Bob, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

If you have questions or wish to place an order, please contact us at jeff@ramseycharitabletrust.org.

The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.

Multidisciplinary Simulation Center

About

The Mayo Clinic Multidisciplinary Simulation Center transforms clinical medical education by helping educators develop, implement, and evaluate experiential curricula that advance patient care.

Our simulation center represents a living collaborative between all specialties and health care professions at Mayo Clinic, where the needs of the patient come first. It is through this lens — to best serve our patients — that our simulation center works to fully realize the benefits of simulation-based education, practice, and research opportunities.

Medical simulation has important lessons and applications for all involved in the risk-laden environment of health care. It provides the ideal environment for teaching healthcare teams how to care for patients. By being allowed to make mistakes, learners can see the effects of those mistakes without harming patients. Simulation makes the learning environment come alive.

Medical centers of excellence must rise to the challenges of both demonstrated competence and scholarly analysis of efficacy via scientific methods, including the use of simulation in medical education.

Mayo Clinic has applied its renowned collaborative practice model to explore and advance simulation education across specialties and professional roles to better educate practitioners.

The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.
The Ramsey Charitable Trust, Inc.

What is Simulation?

Emerging medical simulation technologies provide training in a risk-free, supportive environment where the complex nuances of ideal patient care can be identified, recreated, practiced, and tested among learners to ensure the highest levels of competency.

Simulation technologies can create common and unique crisis scenarios. Chaos can be created on demand. Monitors show physiologic changes just as they would occur in real patients.

Simulation training offers unique and powerful learning opportunities in key competencies, including communication, teamwork, emergent conditions, and leadership, as well as in tasks that require well-practiced manual skills, such as diagnostics and surgical procedures.

Simulation-based medical education provides a controlled or simulated environment to imitate a real-life patient care setting. Through simulation, learners can practice and master skills without putting patients at risk.

Simulation technology encompasses equipment such as computer software and other devices that allow learners to practice specific diagnostic and surgical techniques, and includes three primary types of simulation in realistic patient care settings:

  • Actors who portray standardized patients
  • Full-sized patient manikins
  • Task trainers

For example, simulation allows learners to practice administering anesthesia to life-sized patient manikins that physiologically respond to treatment just as a real-life patient would. And they can do so in controlled learning environments that mimic real-life patient care settings, such as critical care, surgical, or resuscitation emergencies.