The UW Health Sciences Center opens its doors to the public the weekend of April 23-24, giving people a chance to learn more about educational and career opportunities in health care, as well as recent advances in clinical care and scientific research.

Health Sciences Open House 2004: Mapping a Healthy Future is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, April 23, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 24. The event is free and open to everyone. UW faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to bring their families.

The biennial event at the UW Health Sciences Building and UW Medical Center will have more than 75 exhibitors from the School of Medicine, other health sciences schools, medical centers, and affiliates. Exhibits will be set up in the I-Court, T-wing classrooms, the Health Sciences Building main lobby, the UWMC lobby, and the Surgery Pavilion.

Some of the hands-on, interactive exhibits will include virtual reality medical presentations, patient simulators, and computer models of research discoveries. This Open House will feature more basic science-related exhibits than ever before.

About 30 school groups consisting of more than 1100 high school and college students will be visiting the campus on Friday as part of the Open House.

On Saturday, former UW women's basketball player Kayla Burt and Peter Kudenchuk, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology, will give a joint lecture, Bouncing Back from Sudden Death, from 11 a.m. to noon in Hogness Auditorium, Room A-420 of the Health Sciences Building.

Burt will discuss her sudden cardiac arrest two years ago, and how her friends and Medic One saved her life. Kudenchuk will discuss the treatment of cardiac arrest outside the hospital, as well as the defibrillator he implanted in Burt's chest to prevent another cardiac arrest.

For more information about the Health Sciences Open House, call the event hotline at 206-685-9419 or visit http://www.washington.edu/hsoh/