Editor’s Message

Hello!! It is my pleasure to introduce myself to you as the newest editor of our SOCCA Interchange Newsletter. I have been a part of the Newsletter now for a number of years, writing and editing a wide variety of interesting and informative pieces under the direction of previous editors that have mentored me in many different ways.

One of the most important lessons from these editorial mentors was that communication and collaboration are the essential clinical, educational and research features of Critical Care Anesthesiologists. To a large degree, communication is the hallmark feature of our specialty, whether it’s communicating with colleagues (of many different specialties), patients or families, about treatments, diagnoses, tests, and many other details, we are frequently responsible for initiating and leading truly great conversations. Our Society and the SOCCA Interchange Newsletter should be no exception. We can be great communicators…it’s in our very DNA…and that’s the spirit I want to foster in everything we do as a part of the Communication Committee and the SOCCA newsletter moving forward.

To that end, the SOCCA newsletter is changing in small ways that build on our previous successes in communication and collaboration for our Society, its members, and our critical care profession. We are developing a few new sections, specifically to highlight what our Society and its members are doing. In essence, we want to better communicate all the ways that SOCCA members are improving patient care today, tomorrow, and for generations to come. These new sections will highlight interesting patient care issues that our members encounter, profiles of research conducted by our members, and topics that are important to our professional and personal well-being. You will see all these new sections starting in this issue of the newsletter.

In addition, we are developing an integrated communication plan for our members that exists beyond just the SOCCA Interchange Newsletter. Did you know SOCCA is on twitter? Today, SOCCA has more than 400 twitter followers. So, please follow us on twitter (@SOCCA_CritCare) so that we can continue to integrate communication between the Society, its Board and you. In the future, we will also develop other appropriate social media communication outlets such as Facebook and Instagram, with approval and oversight of the SOCCA Board. Maximizing our Society’s use of existing social media communication and collaboration opportunities is a next logical step for all of us and can be a relatively safe way for you to join the ongoing collaborative and real-time conversations that are important to way we undertake clinical care, education and research.

Finally, I want to ask for your help. We need you, your knowledge and your expertise to write future articles for this newsletter. If you have an idea for an article, an interesting case, or just a desire to be more engaged with other members of the Society, please contact me (kevin.hatton@uky.edu) or our administrator, Vivian Abalama (vabalama@iars.org), at any time. We have developed a supportive environment for writers with many different levels of experience from novice to expert. We want to hear from you!!

Author

Kevin W. Hatton, MD, FCCM

Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Surgery

University of Kentucky College of Medicine

Lexington, Kentucky