The Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists

The Early Career Working Group has been working hard to put together some exciting content for this fall. First off will be our Job Seminar for Fellows on October 21 at 6pm EST. This webinar has been specially arranged for our members who have just started their fellowships and are starting to look for jobs and plan their careers. Please join us for what promises to be a lively discussion with your co-fellows from around the country. Our panelists will include department chairs, program directors, members in private practice, and recent fellowship graduates.

The strength of SOCCA is the wealth of talent and energy of its members. One of the ways to serve the Society is through volunteer activities. The SOCCA Nominations Committee annually evaluates nominees and develops an election ballot for available Officer and Director positions. This election cycle we will be electing a Secretary (2-year term) and 3 Board of Directors (3-year term). The Secretary position serves as the entry position for eventual advancement to Society President. Further details about the governance structure of SOCCA are described in our Society Bylaws.

Searches are often conducted within academic departments to find suitable candidates for leadership succession.  This is usually done either when a vacancy emerges, following a retirement or when a new role is created. Internal searches are carried out to offer inclusion to emerging talent and add diversity to the pool of academics already holding administrative roles. Finding a good fit for a leadership role is an inexact science.

Undertaking robust research may offer professional gratification and a betterment of our specialty that cannot be gleaned from clinical excellence alone. It has to be said my journey through research has been an evolved one, catalyzed by clinical questions, collaborations, mentorship and a pursuit of an ever-sharpening question around the role of oxygen and other gasotransmitters in perioperative inflammation and critical illness. To my mind, I have been very fortunate to be in an environment at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center which affords academic time, mentorship and understands the committed investment it takes to develop a home-grown clinically active researcher.

Out of hospital cardiac arrest is a highly morbid and clinically challenging public health issue.

Imposter syndrome is the internal struggle to trust our knowledge and capability, and it follows many of us through each facet of training and career. I first experienced it in medical school. Time and experience is a good antidote, but the real remedy is mimicry; “fake it until you make it.”

The other day I was listening to one of my favorite podcasters (not in the medical field) about how she was forcing herself to wear regular clothes for five days in a row, as during the pandemic she had been wearing sweatpants for over 400 days and she had reached a point where she wanted to feel normal again.

Read members-only job posts—including roles with The University of Kansas Health System, Oregon Anesthesiology Group, and University of Florida Department of Anesthesiology—at SOCCA’s Job Board.

I was a second-year anesthesia resident when my teachers and mentors encouraged me to go the annual Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (SOCCA) meeting. At my very first meeting, I found the atmosphere very family-like, very open, very healthy and a lot of positivity all around. Ten years later, I chaired my very first SOCCA meeting at the recently concluded SOCCA Annual Meeting in 2021. I never thought that a decade of association with the SOCCA would get me here, and neither did I ever think that I would one day chair a virtual meeting.

A big welcome to all our new members to the SOCCA Membership Committee! We look forward to collaborating with you all. The main mission for the SOCCA Membership Committee is to coordinate all membership activities for SOCCA. Our membership numbers and interest in SOCCA continue to grow. To answer the asks of our members (‘I want to be more involved, but how do I do it?’), the SOCCA Membership Committee has launched a strategic structure realignment intended to better serve the members of SOCCA and the Anesthesiology Critical Care community. The realignment should foster increased engagement, diversity, and opportunities for members to contribute to the current and future of SOCCA.