Knowing how to react in an emergency situation can save lives, but sometimes it’s confusing what particular colors mean in emergency notifications that are communicated by email and overhead announcements across Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Natalie Ortiz is a typical six-year-old first grader — happy, active and fidgety — the kind of patient often sedated for a lengthy Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center will be one of several area hospitals and federal, state and local agencies participating in the 2013 Regional Hospitals Fall Severe Weather Exercise on Thursday, Nov. 7.

In more than 50 years of clinical practice and teaching at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Fred Goldner Jr., M.D., trained countless medical students and residents who learned flawless diagnostic skills from the Vanderbilt-educated Nashville native.

Efforts to prevent, identify and respond to children and adolescents who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking are largely under supported, inefficient, uncoordinated and unevaluated, according to a report released last week by a committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

D. Borden Lacy, Ph.D., associate professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, and Biochemistry, will receive the 2014 Margaret Etter Award from the American Crystallographic Association (ACA) for outstanding achievement and exceptional potential in crystallographic research demonstrated by a scientist at an early stage of their independent career.