April 25, 2008

SIU Med School Sponsors Pearson Medical History Lecture

The effects and influence of art and architecture on patients is the topic for the thirteenth annual Emmet F. Pearson Memorial Medical History Lecture at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.  The free, public lecture is at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 8, in SIU’s South Auditorium (second floor), 801 N. Rutledge St. in Springfield.

“Evidence-based Health Care Architecture” will be presented by Roger S. Ulrich, Ph.D.  He will discuss the influence of patient room architecture and noise levels on patients and staff as well as how nature and gardens can lessen patient pain and stress.

Ulrich is a Beale endowed professor of health facilities design at Texas A&M University and a faculty fellow of the Center for Health Systems and Design.  He served on the task force on the Hospital of the Future established by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Health Design in California.

The event is jointly sponsored by the SIU medical humanities department, Friends of the Pearson Museum and SimmonsCooper Cancer Institute at SIU.  Dr. Emmet F. Pearson, who is memorialized by the lecture, was a Springfield physician who was also a professor emeritus in the internal medicine and medical humanities departments at SIU.  He died in June 1996.  SIU’s medical museum is named in his honor.

For more information, call SIU’s medical humanities department, 545-4261 weekdays.

-30-