I’ll even stage one if needed.

A racing gurney and looks of concern make me happy

I’ve been fortunate to have done most of my healthcare photography at major medical institutions. Mostly at University of California, Los Angeles and recently at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. These are major trauma and research centers. The places you want to go when you have a major health issue like a heart attack.

An EKG and exam in the emergency room

This series was shot to illustrate an integrated team approach to handling a heart attack from the arrival and evaluation in the ER and the examination and potential intervention in the angiogram suite.

Opening a blocked blood vessel in the angiogram suite

Even though this case was a simulated heart attack I always enjoy the challenge of making the cases look realistic. They need to pass “the hallway test” of colleagues who will see the photos when this “Report to the Community 2010″ is printed.

As fun as it is for me to shoot these emergent situations. An often overlooked part of healthcare is preventing problems in the first place. This could be teaching healthy eating practices in an elementary school.

Eating fruit and yogurt at a nutrition lesson

Or having a trusted relationship with your primary care doctor.

Personal interaction builds a bond of trust between patient and doctor

In real life, patient areas don’t have that refined TV look that you find on “House“, nor are research labs as stylish as they are on “Bones” and the “CSI” shows.

The first challenge is always to understand what’s going on in the lab and determine how to communicate that unique story. In this case the researcher is doing an advanced DNA screening of an individual patient to calculate the respond to an expensive chemotherapy medication. This is an early stage of personalized medicine.

DNA screening to match effective treatment for a chemotherapy drug

Having cancer is about more than how your DNA reacts to treatment, it’s also about how you deal with the emotional aspect of the disease.

A cancer survivor volunteers to hear patient's concerns

Prevention, bonding, research and emotional health are important part of care. I love showing it all.

But that still doesn’t beat sending a trauma team racing down the hall.

Trauma team racing down a hallway

All these photos were taken for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and were published in their “Report to the Community 2010″.  I’ll update the post when an on-line version is posted.

Mark Harmel

harmelphoto.com

@MarkHarmel

Most of my healthcare photography involves shooting for major academic and research institutes. It is normal to shoot researchers doing ground breaking science in labs, surgeons conducting brain surgery, and patients that were saved by some clinical trial.  Years ago during the last major healthcare debate in the Clinton years, I was asked by Postgraduate Medicine Magazine to show the life of doctors in differing medical practices that ranged from a Kaiser HMO setting to a small town private practice. And recently I had the opportunity to show how healthcare is practiced in a community hospital. It is good to be reminded that most of medical care takes place in individual doctor offices and smaller hospitals.

A dad amazed by his new baby

In this project we focused on some of the more common ways patients interact with the hospital, such as having a baby and dealing with an accident. Like many community hospitals Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital promotes their maternity services. Having a baby is a happy encounter with a hospital and it is a great way to establish a lifelong relationship. This allowed me to shoot multiple moms and dads bonding with their new babies.

An adorable girl modeling an arm injury

Another common way to come into the hospital is through normal everyday accidents. We showed both a childhood injury and a sports accident. For this we staged some procedures in the emergency department including this mock arm injury to a adorable girl’s arm.

A volunteer that was honored as a Healthcare Hero

In academic settings the focus is much more on doctors, but here there was also a way to celebrate the other healthcare providers. These are their Healthcare Heros. They are any individual that made a difference in a hospital visit or stay. This can be any staff member from a volunteer…

A smiling Hero nurse

to a nurse, medical tech and even a few doctors. These staff member were honored with a pin and many ended up on posters displayed throughout the hospital.

A pair of OR nurses at the end of their shift

There is much to be celebrated about cutting edge medicine, but too often we forget that the majority of care – and often the most important treatment comes from the human interaction between a healthcare worker and a patient. It was great getting out of the lab and back on the frontline of medicine.

To view my other medicine posts, please visit these links: Heart Valve, Hallway Test, and Early Birds Keep Their Health.

Mark Harmel

harmelphoto.com