News

This March, new research from members of the Duke Neurology Department advanced our missions of patient care, translational and clinical research, and neurology training, contributing to 16 new peer-reviewed journal articles.

The consequences of Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative movement disorders go beyond their physical symptoms. They also force people with these conditions, as well as their loved ones, to confront grief, anger, and a host of end-of-life concerns. Katherine Henderson, MDiv, the subject of this week’s Spotlight interview, recently joined our interdisciplinary Benchmark Clinic as a non-denominational chaplain to help Parkinson’s patients confront and work through these concerns.

Today is National Women Physician’s Day. This day was marked to honor the birthday of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman allowed to enter medical school in the United States. Despite being forced to sit in separately in lectures, being excluded from labs, and facing other forms of discrimination Blackwell graduated first in her class in 1849, and went on to a long and distinguished career, improving physician handwashing, opening the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, and training nurses for Union hospitals during the Civil War.

In 2002, Teikko Artis was in a bind. A year after starting at Duke, Artis enjoyed his work as a patient service advocate in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. But with bills piling up, a four-year-old daughter to support, and his own long-term financial security to think of, he needed more money. Artis started to plan how to advance his career. 

The Duke Neurology Department continued to grow and advance its missions of patient care, research, and training the next generation of neurology providers in 2022. Highlights from the first half of our calendar year include national and Duke-wide awards recognizing our faculty’s contributions to the field of diversity, inclusion, and neurology as a whole. The same period also saw the growth of the new Duke/UNC Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and three of our neurologists don helmets and get in their racing care.

Michelle Moshkowitz’s history with Duke Neurology stretches back to 2008, when she started working as a registered medical assistant at our Morreene Road Clinic. After a stint in one of Duke’s Integrative Medicine Clinics, she has returned to Morreene Road, where she’s helping to schedule, organize, and maintain our clinical research for Huntington’s disease.

Members of the Duke Neurology Department advanced the field of epilepsy care, research, and education at the 2022 meeting of the American Epilepsy Society (AES) in Nashville this week. This year, our faculty and trainees gave two lectures and co-authored eight new abstracts, for a total of more than 150 submissions from Duke to the AES since 2000.

Webb Pierson was an Aircraft Commander in the U.S. Navy in early 2021 when the COVID19 pandemic forced him and his fellow officers to isolate for two weeks before their deployment. Pierson used that time to reflect on his career, ultimately deciding to pursue a graduate studies in neuroscience and genomics. Now, Pierson is finishing up that graduate work while also running Duke NROTC program and conducting research in the lab of Ornit Chiba-Falek, PhD.

This week’s Spotlight interview shines on Clinical Research Coordinator Alexis Schuettke. In this interview, Schuettke talks to us about her many roles helping to coordinate studies on idiopathic hypersomnolence, status epilepticus, and delayed sleep-wake phase disorder. She also talks to us about the joys and challenges of her work and enjoying making art, riding her bike and playing clarinet and piano when she’s not at Duke.

For almost eight years, Debbie Dahnke, RN, worked in the Duke University Hospital’s neuro step down unit, helping some of the most intensely injured patients in DUH transition from neurocritical care to the next stage of their medical journey. Now as one of our research nurse coordinators, she’s helping to enroll and care for patients involved in our clinical trials for multiple sclerosis (MS) and status epilepticus. For this week’s Spotlight interview, Dahnke talks to us about how a friend with MS inspired her to become a nurse.