AAAC

A Message from the President

It is an honor to step into the role of President of our organization. Our society owes a debt of gratitude to Jeff Kirsch, our immediate past-president. During his time as President, Jeff worked tirelessly to strengthen our organization, to promote academic anesthesiology, and to enhance our advocacy efforts. I hope to maintain the standards of excellence and accomplishments of Jeff and the other past-presidents of our organization.

SAAA will continue to be engaged in:

  1. Formalizing the renaming of our society to include Perioperative Medicine.
  2. Providing feedback from our academic caucus to the ASA on matters of importance to the academic community.
  3. Working with the ASA to emphasize academic anesthesiology and the importance of research on the ASA’s website, which is being redesigned to help highlight scholarship and research.
  4. Continue to work with the ASA and other anesthesiology organizations in monitoring changes to the VA Handbook as regards CRNA practices and responding, as necessary, to the final regulations when they are posted.
  5. Helping to integrate the Anesthesia Toolbox and Learnly and bring the combined product under the auspices of the SAAA as an educational resource for our members.
  6. Fostering SAAA membership of early career investigators currently funded by a K-type or T-32 award who will be invited to become associate members of AUA.
  7. Our partnership with FAER to maintain funding for education research.

Our recent meeting in Chicago was, by all accounts, very successful. It was the most well-attended SAAA meeting for which we have data, with more than 550 attendees. The initial impressions of the Swissotel Chicago were very favorable. We are in the process of reviewing the feedback that attendees have provided us. Our goal is to use your feedback to improve our annual meeting program. Along those lines, please contact me directly with your suggestions for topics or speakers for next year’s program, or any other suggestions you have for how SAAA can be an even better resource for your department and program.

Perioperative Medicine and the future of anesthesiology has been an important issue for the SAAA and its members. The results of the recent election suggest there will be changes impacting insurance coverage and perhaps changes to Medicare. It is unclear whether or how these changes will impact the perioperative surgical home or the continued development of anesthesiology’s role in perioperative medicine. The SAAA will continue to advocate for our comprehensive role in caring for patients who are undergoing procedural and surgical care.

I look forward to serving the SAAA over the next two years.

Peter Rock, MD, MBA, FCCM