Research Committee Update

The SOCCA Research Committee has embarked on a strategic realignment intended to best serve the members of the Society and of the Anesthesiology Critical Care community, at large. The Research Committee has traditionally worked to aggregate and analyze data on Anesthesiology Critical Care practices and on SOCCA membership. The newly reorganized Research Committee will build on this foundation and have proposed a new vision and developed initial proposals to accomplish that vision.

The Research Committee met in the spring and at the SOCCA Annual Meeting in Montreal. From these meetings, several key ideas emerged from discussion:

• The vision of the Research Committee is to promote opportunities for scientific excellence and innovation in the domain of Anesthesiology Critical Care.
• The Committee would like to define key scientific priorities in the field. It is interested in developing the concept of “Perioperative Intensive Care Medicine” (PICM) as an organizing principle. PICM is the science and delivery of critical care before, during and after surgery. A significant proportion of all critical care falls under the definition of PICM and providing leadership in PICM emerges as a strategic priority for critical care anesthesiologists and for SOCCA.
• The Committee would like to explore feasibility of a SOCCA Research Network which would focus on multi-center trials and large-scale observational data.
• The Committee is interested in commissioning SOCCA Working Groups which could elaborate clinical practice recommendations or research agendas on specific topics of relevance to PICM.
• The Committee will formalize processes and workflows for several of core functions, including: review of survey requests, peer review of abstracts submitted for the SCCA Annual Meeting, adjudication of awards and any funding appropriations.
• The Research Committee will reach out within SOCCA to engage all society members who have an interest in working.

Moving forward on these different items will require an organized and concerted effort. The Committee will work closely with the other SOCCA committees. We will need to establish several new working groups tasked with developing solutions for the Committee’s objectives. We wish to engage with all members of SOCCA who would like to participate as committee members, officers, and most importantly to contribute new ideas and methods. All those who are interested, feel free to email Dr. Robert Stevens, Research Committee chair, at rstevens@jhmi.edu.

Author

Robert D. Stevens, MD, FCCM

Research Committee Chair

Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, Maryland