Everything about Massachusetts General Hospital totally explained
Massachusetts General Hospital (often abbreviated to "Mass General" or just "MGH") is a
teaching hospital of
Harvard Medical School and a biomedical research facility in
Boston, Massachusetts.
It is owned and operated by
Partners HealthCare (which also owns
Brigham and Women's Hospital and
North Shore Medical Center). MGH is part of the consortium of hospitals which operates
Boston MedFlight and is a member of the
Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.
History
Founded in
1811, the original hospital was designed by the famous American architect
Charles Bulfinch. It is the third oldest general hospital in the
United States, and the oldest and largest in
New England. John Warren, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at Harvard Medical School, which was located in Cambridge then, spearheaded the move of the medical school to Boston. Warren's son, John Collins Warren, along with James Jackson, led the efforts to start the Massachusetts General Hospital. Since all those who had sufficient money were cared for at home, Massachusetts General Hospital, like most hospitals that were founded in the 19th century, was intended to care for the poor. During mid- to late-1800s, Harvard Medical School was located adjacent to Massachusetts General Hospital.
The hospital's work with developing specialized computer software systems for medical use in the
1960s lead to the development of the
MUMPS programming language, which stands for "
Massachusetts General Hospital
Utility
Multi-
Programming
System", an important programming language and data-base system heavily used in medical applications such as patient records and billing. A major patient database system called File Manager, which was developed by the
Veterans Administration (now the Department of Veterans' Affairs), was created using this language.
Early use of anesthesia
It was in the
Ether Dome of MGH on October 16,
1846 that one of the first demonstrations of
ether was presented to the medical profession to produce insensibility to pain by William Thomas Green Morton, a Boston dentist. An operation was performed on that date to remove a blood vessel tumor from the neck of a
Cambridge, Massachusetts printer, William Abbott. The MGH Chief of Surgery, John Collins Warren performed the surgery and remarked "Gentlemen this is no humbug." News of the remarkable "new" invention rapidly traveled around the world. The actual first documented use of
ether to render a patient unconscious prior to surgery was performed on March 30,
1842, by Dr.
Crawford Long of
Danielsville, Georgia. The term anesthesia was suggested for the insensible state by
Oliver Wendell Holmes, then a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. A modern anesthesia department was established at the hospital in 1936 under the leadership of Henry Knowles Beecher. The Ether Dome still exists and is open to the public. It is one of the oldest operating theaters in existence. It contains a remarkable painting of the event by Warren and Lucia Prosperi.
Current operations
The hospital has 898 beds and admits over 45,000 patients each year. The surgical staff performs over 34,000 operations yearly. The
obstetrics service handles over 3,500 births each year. The hospital handles over 1 million outpatients each year at its main campus, as well as its five satellite facilities in Boston at Back Bay, Charlestown, Chelsea, Everett, and Revere. Architect
Hisham N. Ashkouri, working in conjunction with Hoskins Scott Taylor and Partners, provided the space designs and schematics for the pediatrics, neonatal intensive care, and in-patient related floors, as well as the third floor surgical suites and support facilities.
In 2003, MGH was named the state's first Magnet hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association. Magnet recognition represents the highest honor awarded for nursing excellence.
In the fall of 2004, the
Yawkey Center for Outpatient Care opened. This 440,000 square feet, ten floor facility is the largest and most comprehensive outpatient building in New England.
With more than 10,000 employees, the hospital is the largest non-governmental employer in Boston. It is sometimes jokingly described as "The
Medical-Industrial Complex."
Massachusetts General Hospital is affiliated with
Harvard Medical School and is its original teaching hospital. MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $400 million.
Though it has its own chief of psychiatry, MGH is closely affiliated with nearby
McLean Hospital, which is also affiliated with
Harvard Medical School.
It consistently ranks as one of the country's top hospitals in
U.S. News and World Report. In 2007, Massachusetts General Hospital ranked 5th overall from among 5,462 medical centers with a #1 ranking in
psychiatry as well as high rankings in
endocrinology,
orthopedics,
respiratory disorders,
geriatrics,
digestive disorders,
neurology and
neurosurgery,
kidney disease,
heart,
rheumatology,
cancer,
urology,
gynecology, and
ear, nose, and throat. Since 1994, MGH has been awarded the most research funding for an independent hospital by the National Institutes of Health, receiving over $285 million dollars alone in 2004 . MGH is also home to the world-renowned
Mallinckrodt General Clinical Research Center.
MGH is located at 55 Fruit Street in Boston, Massachusetts. The campus is in an area formerly known as the
West End, adjacent to the
Charles River and
Beacon Hill. The closest
MBTA stop is
Charles/MGH on the Red Line. On 27 March 2007, the new
Charles/MGH station was opened with new renovations, including handicap accessible elevators .
Trivia
- MGH nurses were featured in a four-part, front-page series in The Boston Globe entitled "", which is being used in nursing schools throughout the country.
- There are five main food service areas for the general public. They include the Eat Street Cafe in the lower level of the Ellison Building, the Blossom Street Cafe in the Cox lobby, Coffee Central in the White lobby, Tea Leaves and Coffee Beans in the Wang Ambulatory Care Center, and Coffee South in the Yawkey outpatient center.
- MGH is referred to as "MBH" or "Man's Best Hospital" in Samuel Shem's satirical novel, The House of God; also as "Man's Greatest Hospital".
- There have been several mentions of Massachusetts General Hospital in fictional television series and movies:
- In the series "St. Elsewhere", the doctors of St. Elsewhere often make references to Boston General Hospital, which could be interpreted as a reference to MGH.
- In the series Arrested Development, Tobias Fünke reports that he'd previously worked at the hospital as chief resident in psychiatry for two years.
- In the series Alias, Arvin Sloane mentions that Sydney's psychiatrist trained at the hospital.
- In the movie Sleeping with the Enemy, an MGH neurologist gives the characters played by Julia Roberts and Patrick Bergin a ride on his sailboat off the coast of Cape Cod.
- In the movie Malice, the lead character played by Alec Baldwin is an MGH-trained surgeon with a "God complex".
- In an episode of House, Dr. Gregory House fakes brain cancer in order to participate in a clinical trial at the MGH. The experimental anti-depressant would have given Dr. House, addicted to painkillers, a powerful high.
- In an episode of Grey's Anatomy, Lexie Grey explains that she was supposed to have an internship at "Mass Gen" (referring to the hospital by a moniker that's almost never applied to the hospital in real life) but that she remained in Seattle as a result of the untimely death of her mother.
- In an episode of The Onion News Network, a video podcast from The Onion, MGH was featured in a story titled "Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys To Hospital."
- Residents, students, and area paramedics have fondly referred to the hospital as "Massive Genital Hospital."
- In Jan Karon's novel series, the Mitford Years, the local doctor, Walter "Hoppy" Harper, was an intern at MGH, having graduated from Harvard School of Medicine.
- Sadly, MGH no longer serves shasta to it's paitents. It has been replaced by more commercial brands
Further Information
Get more info on 'Massachusetts General Hospital'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://massachusetts_general_hospital.totallyexplained.com">Massachusetts General Hospital Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
