Geriatric psychiatrist Susan Lehmann tells the story of an 82-year-old patient who was sleeping poorly, losing weight, experiencing episodes of panting and shortness of breath and feeling physically drained. After a year of such complaints, her physicians in rural Tennessee remained stymied. They told the woman's husband that she was "normal" and suggested that he "just take her out more." Another family member persuaded her to travel to Baltimore to see Lehmann.
The Hopkins physician quickly diagnosed the elderly woman with depression accompanied by panic attacks. "Because she never told the doctors that she felt 'sad,' they were not equipped to recognize what this was," she says. "It eluded them completely."
The Hopkins physician hopes to help change that with support from the School of Medicine’s Institute for Excellence in Education. In December she became the first recipient of the Institute’s Berkheimer Faculty Education Scholar Award, an annual $50,000 grant to fund a project that may improve the education of medical and/or graduate students nationally as well as at the school of medicine.
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