Although it is easy to write a president’s message that concentrates on the many accomplishments of current and past members of the AUA, I have tried to focus my time, as a leader, on what we can do to improve the future. Thus, despite our distractions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, I plan to quickly facilitate an update of the AUA strategic plan, with the expectation that we will help develop a path for a healthy and sustaining future for academic anesthesiology. As we look around the country and consider the decisions being made by Deans of Schools of Medicine there is significant risk for continued erosion of academic values in anesthesiology.

It has been my pleasure to serve as the President of the Association of University Anesthesiologists (AUA) over the last two years. Events of the past six months have rocked the AUA, as they have the whole world. First the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, wreaking devastation on health, healthcare, academic activities, and social structure. In its wake, it also brought massive unemployment and economic devastation.

The past few months and the past few days have been particularly difficult for our communities. The disparities in health outcomes uncovered by the Covid-19 pandemic have lifted the veil on the systemic inequities in healthcare. The recent horrific events with the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd expose the racism that are endemic in our society.

The Association of University Anesthesiologists (AUA) Council is strongly committed to creating a culture within our organization with equality and inclusion as core values. We believe that each of our members’ institutions should also strive to attain a culture where all people are welcomed and equal. Black Lives Matter (BLM) is deeply interconnected with our ideals of equality and inclusion, and we wholeheartedly support the BLM movement.

An international group of physicians and scientists recently established the COVID-19 Research Outcomes Worldwide Network (CROWN) Collaborative, a global research network charged with investigating promising therapeutic treatments to protect frontline healthcare workers from COVID-19 infection. Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is serving as the central clinical coordinating center for the CROWN Collaborative under the leadership of IARS Board Member Michael Avidan, MBBCh, FCASA. Dr. Avidan is a Principal Investigator for the study.

Much has been written about “flattening the curve” to avoid overburdening our healthcare system. The spotlight has primarily focused on availability of hospital and ICU beds, ventilators, medications, personal protective equipment (PPE), and other material resources. There has been less focus on a different limited resource, however, which is being quickly depleted – the mental health and wellbeing of healthcare professionals (HCPs).

The EAB welcomed four new members from the AUA membership: Drs. Arna Banerjee, Teresa A Mulaikal, Kenneth Shelton and David Wlody.

The Scientific Advisory Board requested applications earlier this year for new members to fill four open positions. Once again, we received a very large number of outstanding applications, confirming our members’ commitment to service and scientific excellence. The SAB is proud to welcome the following new members, who start their three-year terms this spring.

Research in education is increasingly common and plays an important role in the development of our specialty. This increasing interest is principally driven by two factors: 1) a desire to establish evidence-based best practices in education; and, 2) an opportunity for clinician educators to produce scholarship as part of a promotion pathway. Despite advancements in technology, medical students and residents spend the majority of their time training to be doctors in roughly the same way as they have been for the past 100 years.

Neuroanesthesia fellowships were a topic of great interest in the early years of the Society of Neuroscience in Anesthesiology and Critical Care (SNACC). The discussion and debate about fellowships has ensued over the almost 50-year life of SNACC. Maurice Albin, a SNACC founder, wrote a seminal article on the need for neuroanesthesia fellowships in the fall 2008 SNACC newsletter which brought to attention many of the questions within the history of accreditation.

Dolores B. Njoku, MD, recently took the helm of AUA Secretary, succeeding President-Elect George Mashour, MD, PhD. Dr. Njoku has been a member of the AUA since 2008, when she began her journey toward a goal of contributing to her academic society.

Dr. Wood came from humble beginnings. She was born in Leeds, England in 1946; her father did not graduate from high school and she was the first member of her family to attend college—something she was keen to point out was true for many of her generation. Her family was incredibly supportive of her education, encouraging her to attend a competitive public high school and providing her with a loving family environment to study and succeed.

The definition of “academic” is “relating to scholarship and education”; this definition suggests an openness to ideas and change, as new knowledge should lead to changes in behavior. In medicine, change in physician behavior is often slow for unclear reasons—and to the detriment of patient care. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was a Hungarian obstetrician who discovered the cause of puerperal fever in 1847 when he was a 29-year-old Chief Resident (“first assistant”) in the first clinic of the lying-in division of the Vienna General Hospital.

If you have an idea for an article, an announcement, or an opinion on a recently published article, please submit your proposal/article to Dr. Lisa Wise-Faberowski, MD, lwf1212@stanford.edu before Monday, August 31, 2020. If your article is selected, we will contact you for editing and formatting!