Annual Meeting Evolution

We would like to share with the SOCCA membership some of the changes around the annual meeting for 2024 as well as for future meetings. Unlike previous years where SOCCA had a separate meeting (a day before the IARS meeting) with a sprinkle of SOCCA sessions during the IARS meeting, the 2024 annual meeting in Seattle will be a combined IARS/SOCCA meeting. What this entails is an integration of SOCCA sessions within the IARS meeting, and the creation of a separate “critical care track” exclusively for content related to critical care medicine. This would ensure that SOCCA educational sessions will run throughout the duration of the meeting. In addition to the critical care medicine related education content throughout the IARS/SOCCA annual meeting, a dedicated half-day session of exclusive SOCCA content is also being planned after the IARS meeting ends. We believe that the SOCCA-only half-day meeting on Sunday, May 18 would allow us to present the various SOCCA awards as well as host the SOCCA business meeting and may provide an opportunity to accommodate additional education sessions. Discussions around the feasibility and logistics of this additional session are currently underway.

We are excited to announce that after extensive discussions, we will also have a SOCCA-conducted workshop on the use of POCUS in managing medical emergencies as part of the annual meeting. This will give our membership hands-on experience with POCUS along with some great didactics. As in previous years, there will be oral and poster research presentations interspersed throughout the meeting.

In addition to the education content, new workshops, and research presentations, there will be opportunities for the members to network and meet throughout the meeting. SOCCA committees will have the option of holding networking breakfasts and their respective committee meetings throughout the meeting with dedicated space for SOCCA on all meeting days to conduct such meetings. The leadership of various committees and workgroups has been asked to provide their preferred dates and times for these events. Members will be able to attend both IARS and SOCCA sessions using a common registration and will also have the option to network with colleagues from other specialties of anesthesia. All in all, we feel that this integration will be a win-win situation for both IARS and SOCCA members.

As part of the integration, the SOCCA education committee members were involved in the grading of the proposals submitted by the SOCCA membership. Additionally, the education committee leadership was asked to be a part of the annual meeting oversight committee (AMOC). We received many great proposals and considering the amount of time we had at our disposal for critical care content, we were able to integrate a significantly higher number of proposals into the combined IARS/SOCCA meeting than prior years. We will also be including additional proposals into the dedicated SOCCA half-day meeting, once that is finalized. With such an abundance of time available for SOCCA content, it provides a great opportunity for SOCCA members to be able to contribute and present at the annual meeting. On behalf of the education committee, we urge the SOCCA members to keep submitting high-quality session proposals with diverse speakers for future annual meetings.

We are grateful to the leadership of SOCCA and IARS for making this integration possible and look forward to bringing the SOCCA membership some great educational content spanning over 3 days in the upcoming combined IARS/SOCCA meeting. We are very excited and look forward to this new format as this would mean more educational content dedicated to critical care than ever before and more opportunities for SOCCA members to present.

Authors

Allison Dalton, MD

Chair, SOCCA Education Committee

University of Chicago

Chicago, Illinois

Kunal Karamchandani, MD, FCCM

Vice Chair, SOCCA Education Committee

UT Southwestern Medical Center

Dallas, Texas