See You in the Bahamas!

Dr. FlackBy Sean Flack, MBChB, FCA
SPA News Editor

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2020. I hope everyone enjoyed time with family and friends over the holidays. Speaking of family, are you counting the days to the SPA-AAP Pediatric Anesthesiology 2020 meeting, beginning on Friday February 28? If you have not signed up yet, do not delay!  It is an outstanding venue and kudos to Dr. Tarun Bhalla and the organizing committee for a varied and engaging program.  As Dr. Bhalla has noted elsewhere, it is a meeting of firsts:

  • International Venue – The Bahamas!
  • Afternoon Tracks – Academic Practice, Community/Private Practice, Research, Professional Development
  • Concurrent Videography of Sessions
  • Most number of speakers featured on stage
  • Lightning Abstracts
  • Most diverse – region, gender, ethnicity
  • Most non-anesthesiologists on stage

Also, through the efforts of Dr. Olutoyin Olutoye and her Research Committee, all poster sessions at the meeting will be moderated. This is an immense commitment from the moderators and appropriate acknowledgment of the work undertaken by the presenters to prepare and submit a poster to the meeting. Another Research Committee offering described in the newsletter is the Emerging Research Panel that will occur during our conference next month.

Elsewhere in this newsletter, read reviews of the Annual SPA meeting recently held in Orlando, as well as reviews of some ASA pediatric sessions. Learn about the experiences of Dr. Olurotimi Aaron from Nigeria and Dr. Angela Onyando from Kenya, recent graduates of the University of Nairobi Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship program, who attended both meetings as our 2019 SPA Global Scholars. Their time in the USA also included stops in Philadelphia and Seattle.

In her update, Dr. Anita Honkanen (section chair) describes the ongoing activities of the AAP Section on Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine and their anesthesia and pain medicine related policy, advocacy and education efforts on behalf of patients, families and medical colleagues.

I very much look forward to seeing everyone at the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island, Bahamas very soon.

As always, if there is a topic or matter of interest that you would like addressed in your society’s newsletter, please email me at sean.flack@seattlechildrens.org.

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