Welcome to Pediatric Anesthesiology 2015

We are excited to present the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia (SPA) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Section of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine Pediatric Anesthesiology 2015 meeting at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix from March 13 -15, 2015.

There will be a wide range of topics with a focus on patient safety that describe novel emerging technologies, research and practice models that will determine the future practice of pediatric anesthesiology.

The program features renowned national and international faculty from varied practice settings. Among our distinguished faculty, Dr. Bruce Carleton, our keynote speaker from the University of British Columbia, will lecture on “Pharmacogenomics and the Transformation of Practice.” Dr. Mike Schweitzer, Chair of the ASA Committee on Future Models, will discuss new models of care in his lecture entitled the “Pediatric Perioperative Surgical Home.” In our annual AAP Session, we will hear from Dr. Gerald Hickson regarding “The Patient Advocacy Reporting System (PARS) and Behaviors that Undermine a Culture of Safety.” PARS is a model that originated at Vanderbilt University that aggregates and analyzes patient complaints and uses these data to address the risk of certain healthcare practices and behaviors.

In planning this meeting, we reviewed audience comments from past meetings and solicited input from the SPA Education Committee. The Meeting Planning Committee included Dr. Shobha Malviya (Chair, SPA Education Committee), Dr. Rosalie Tassone (Workshop Coordinator), Dr. John Fiadjoe (PBLD Coordinator), Dr. Joe Tobias (AAP section Chair) and Kim Battle (SPA Association Manager). We also had our three shadow program members for the second year, elected from the “young turks” group which is an SPA leadership growth project. Our bright and enthusiastic young members this year are Dr. Inger Aliason, Dr. Tarun Bhalla and Dr. Christina Diaz.

The SPA/AAP Pediatric Anesthesiology 2015 meeting will offer a maximum of 26.5 CME credits. Additional CME offerings on Thursday include 8.5 credits for the Congenital Cardiac Anesthesia Society (CCAS), organized by Program Chair Dr. Nina Guzzetta, and 10 credits for the Society for Pediatric Pain Medicine (SPPM) 2nd Annual Meeting, organized by Program Chair Dr. Robert Wilder. Please note that registration for the CCAS and SPPM meetings are separate from that for the SPA/AAP meeting.

Approval is being sought from the American Board of Anesthesiology to continue to provide lectures that satisfy the Part II Safety CME requirement for Maintenance of Certification in Anesthesiology. We hope that you’ll find this to be a great benefit.

New workshops have been added to enhance the small group interactive discussions. Perioperative Pediatric Advanced Life Support Simulation, Disclosure of Adverse Events and a workshop on Fetal Interventions are likely to be popular new additions to the program.
The Robert M. Smith Award has been presented at the meeting since 1986 to honor an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the field of pediatric anesthesiology. I have the pleasure to announce that the AAP Robert M. Smith Awardee this year is Dr. Charles Lockhart. Please join me in congratulating this exemplary physician and attend the award presentation at the beginning of the afternoon session on Friday.

Sunday opens with a novel Professionalism and Leadership Panel where we will explore successful leadership pathways, what to do in the first ten years of practice and how to prepare for the last ten years of practice. Our hope is that this will entice all attendees regardless of the stage of their careers. This will be followed by the ever-popular Pro/Con panel known as Family Feud, in which six members of our specialty are divided into two teams – North vs. South that each present opinions and best practices about important controversies in pediatric anesthesia. This year the panel will be co-moderated by Dr. Stuart Hall and me.

The program also includes a session that focuses on outcomes data and a special panel on Obstructive Sleep Apnea and another on new surgical technologies. You will find that no matter what the composition of your practice, you will leave the meeting with clinical information immediately relevant and other concepts that will help to sustain your practice within the dynamic health care environment.

It was a great pleasure to have the opportunity to be involved in planning this meeting. We sincerely hope that you will enjoy the meeting and find it to be an enlightening and fruitful experience. This conference is designed to provide new knowledge and clinically relevant lessons that can be used to enhance the care of our pediatric patients.

Warmly,
Samuel H. Wald, MD, MBA