How much alcohol is safe? Experts say knowing the risks can help us make healthier choices around drinking.

Years of conflicting recommendations about alcohol consumption have left many of us confused. Does a daily glass of wine have health benefits? Or, as public health experts warned more recently, is there no amount of alcohol that is entirely without risk? While research into the effects of alcohol continues to evolve, one thing is certain: [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise

Road to Recovery: After a motorcycle crash, Mathew Craft overcame challenges by focusing on finding joy.

Nine years ago, Mathew Craft was riding his motorcycle on a county road in Dayton, Texas, northeast of Houston, when he was struck by a turning car.  “I don’t remember flying over the top of the car,” he says. “But I remember hitting the ground, square on my chest. It sucked the wind out of [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise

Big Gains for Tiny Patients: How Memorial Hermann nurses are working with first responders to improve outcomes for newborns in crisis

All things considered, it’s not a bad time to be a baby. The newborn mortality rate in the U.S. has plummeted from nearly 20 per 1,000 births in the 1960s to the current rate of less than four per 1,000, according to the March of Dimes. But the first month of life, when newborns are [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise

Healing After Heartbreak: A nurse who lost her grandmother as a result of a medical oversight made it her mission to keep patients safe. 

When Baylee McGrath was 12, her grandmother died as a result of a medical error — and it affected her profoundly. “It changed the trajectory of my life,” she says. “From that point on, I knew I wanted to go into nursing. I didn’t want anyone else’s family to go through what my family went [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise

Staying the Course: How nurse navigators help patients on their journey through treatment

When Williadene Brown was diagnosed with cancer, she had plenty of questions. She just couldn’t think of the words to ask them. “It was like a numbness,” she recalls. “I couldn’t talk to my family. I could barely talk to my pastor. I just couldn’t talk. I remember sitting on the side of my bed, thinking, [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise

After a Family Tragedy, a Nurse Found a New Calling in Transplant Care

Organ transplant recipients are close to Jessica Borden’s heart. Borden, a heart transplant coordinator at the Center for Advanced Heart Failure at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, was drawn to this specialty for a personal reason. Her younger brother, Jared, was fatally injured in a horseback riding accident a decade ago, when he was just 11. [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise