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For the last decade, the JPS Health Network Research Symposium has grown in size and depth every year.

Melissa Acosta, Ph.D., Director of the Office of Clinical Research at the health network, said organizers and participants weren’t about to let current social distancing standards due to COVID-19 disrupt that positive momentum. The June 5, 2020 edition of the symposium, which will focus on healthcare inequities and how to eliminate them, will go online. It’s a move she hopes will pave the way for even more growth in the future.

Emergency Medical Technician. Professional saxophonist. Construction worker. They’re all jobs Fort Worth native John Starwalt has held.

But, at 43 years old, he’s finally earned the title he’s dreamed about through all the twists and turns of his life and career: Dr. John Starwalt, DO.

Surgery can often be the key to saving lives or making them better. A couple hours on the operating table and life-threatening issues could suddenly be a problem of the past.

But what if the patient isn’t prepared for their operation? Things like high blood pressure, complications of diabetes, smoking and obesity can sometimes make it too risky for the patient to undergo surgery. That’s where the JPS Surgical Optimization Clinic comes in.

Patients never see their faces. But they play a key role in helping people who need surgery get care at JPS Health Network.

Called patient care coordinators, their job is what the title implies: They’re responsible for choreographing the complicated ballet of making about 1,000 surgeries a month fit into the 13 operating rooms at JPS. 

A group of 10 aspiring JPS Health Network nurses will go to school for free thanks to Reach for the Stars scholarships.

Funded by an anonymous donor, the scholarships are awarded twice a year to JPS team members, according to Jodi Bell, Learning Projects Director in the JPS Human Resources Department. They’re earmarked for team members who want to become a nurse or those who already are nurses but want to enhance their education and abilities.

A lot has changed in the world of medicine over the past 50 years.

But one thing that has remained constant for the last five decades is that neonatologist Dr. Donald Nelms and nephrologist Dr. Kermit Olson have been making rounds at JPS Health Network, providing a combined century of service to Fort Worth and Tarrant County while training the doctors that followed in their footsteps.

JPS Health Network leaders have announced that they’ve begun building a new laboratory data recording and communication system that will make patient care both safer and more efficient.

Called Beaker, the software is made by the same company that created the Epic patient information management system and the MyChart patient information portal JPS currently uses. Because of that, it will work seamlessly with the other patient communication software at the health network.

JPS Health Network police officer Jesse Willyerd has law enforcement in his blood.

He’s the son of a retired Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department deputy, so he’s wanted to be a cop as long as he can remember. It’s not a surprise that, after working at JPS for a while, he itched to go work for a municipal police department to get a taste of what it was like working in a more traditional law enforcement environment.

JPS Health Network trauma surgeons work in rooms full of high-tech lifesaving equipment. Yet one of their most valuable tools might be the simple slips of paper they’ve recently begun to keep handy when they’re on duty.

To get a firsthand look at the challenges homeless patients face when they’re discharged, a group of 28 JPS Health Network nurse residents braved triple-digit temperatures, hoping to learn how to navigate to places where services are available to those in need after they get out of the hospital.