Dunn
Intercom
Duke University Medical Center
VOLUME 24, NUMBER 9
MARCH 4,1977
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
Employee Opinions Sought;
Survey Begins Tomorrow
"This is a sincere effort on the part
of Duke Medical Center to give
employees a chance to say, without
revealing their identities, what they
really feel about working here."
This is the purpose of the
Employee Opinion Survey which
begins tomorrow, according to Frank
J. Semple, president of National
Survey Research Center (NSRC) of
Cleveland, Ohio.
The independent firm is
conducting the survey. (See Intercom,
1/14/77,2/18/77 and 2/25/77.)
Participation is voluntary, but it is
hoped that all medical center
biweekly employees will take
advantage of the opportunity to give
their opinions about what they like
and what they believe needs to be
improved.
Whole-Heaited Cooperation
"This type of research is no easy
task," Semple said. "We will need
the whole-hearted cooperation of
everyone in the work force here at
the medical center to be a success.
"Employees can do their part by
giving us their frank and complete
opiniotis. Then the administration
will be in a position to make this an
even better place for everyone to
work."
Semple said that his company has
seen this happen in other places,
"And we're sure it will work here."
54 Sessions
Fifty-four sessions have been
scheduled during which participants
will fill out a questionnaire, which
has been prepared by NSRC and
which will be explained by NSRC
staff.
In addition to the 52 sessions listed
in last week's Intercom, two will be
held in the nursing school
auditorium. One will be Tuesday at 1
p.m. and the other Wednesday at
1:30 p.m.
Supervisors are currently giving
each employee a card indicating the
time at which she or he may
participate, according to Richard
Peck, administrative director of
Duke Hospital.
Anyone who has not received a
card or who has been scheduled for
an inconvenient time should check
with his or her supervisor. Peck said.
Paid While Participating
The questionnaires will take about
an hour to complete, and employees
will be paid for this time.
There will be about 60
easy-to-answer questions
concerning employees' opinions on
policies, practices, benefits and
(Continued on page 4)
READ ALL ABOUT IT — That's %vhat Ruby Vareene, dietary hostess
(standing) and Betty Greene, diet writer, did When last week's Intercom
came out. They read all about the Employee Opinion Survey which
begins tomorrow. (Photo by John Becton)
Coronary Patients' Lifestyle To Be Studied
For many years, physicians have
had the intuitive feeling that
psychological factors play an
important role in how well or how
poorly coronary heart disease
patients respond to treatment.
Unfortunately for patients,
however, doctors have had no
systematic way of measuring the
extent of this role, and the advice
they gave varied widely — from
good to bad to virtually none at all.
Now, with the help of a five-year,
$103,000 National Heart, Lung and
Blood Institute grant, a scientist at
the medical center is trying to change
all that.
Dr. Redford B. Williams, an
associate professor in the Division of
Psychosomatic Medicine, said he
and research associate Thomas
Haney will collect "a wide range of
psychological and social
information" on patients with
TALKING TURKEY ABOUT CHICKENS—Piu\ Lowenwarter (at
right), a producer for CBS' weekly program "60 Minutes,"
visited the medical center with a camera crew in February to
interview Dr. Mohamed B. Abou-Donia, an assistant professor
of physiology and pharmacology here. In the photograph,
Abou-Donia is explaining that nerve paralysis in test chickens
varied with the dose and duration of exposure to leptophos, a
pesticide believed responsible for nerve damage among
workers at a Bayport, Tex., chemical plant and field hands in
t gypt. A CBS spokesman said the network expects to air the
story on "60 Minutes" at 7 p.m. this Sunday. (Photo by David
Williamson)
known coronary diseases.
Finding Common Denominators
The goal, he said, is to find
common denominators which may
help physicians at Duke and
elsewhere predict what non-medical
factors irifluence readjustment after
heart attacks and other coronary
problems.
"About 400 patients a year will be
extensively interviewed and given
psychological tests," Williams said.
"We plan to follow these patients
over the length of the study."
Information on whether the
patients returned to work following
treatment, how their diseases
affected social and family
relationships, how well their pain
was relieved, how much depression
and anxiety they felt, whether they
display the hard-driving "Type A"
behavior pattern and the like will be
fed into a computer for statistical
analysis.
Psychological Influences
"If we can discover reliable
associations which indicate that with
a given level of coronary disease
someone with a particular
psychological characteristic is more
apt to have a bad outcome, then we
might be able to alter our treatment
to improve that outcome," he said.
"For example, if we find that high
levels of anxiety or nervous tension
are related to continuing chest pain,
we could use a variety of techniques
to train patients to relax," he pointed
out. "In that way, we might be able
(Continued on page 2)