President’s Corner

Colleagues,

We had a fantastic SOCCA and IARS meeting in Denver. It was great seeing so many friends and colleagues and watching our packed conference room during the meeting. Even more impressive was the membership involvement with our new committees, task forces, and workgroups. The goal of SOCCA is to continue to offer numerous areas and opportunities for our members to engage and grow our society.

The IARS has been a great partner with SOCCA, and the IARS has been instrumental in helping us grow. However, several changes are needed due to the growing needs of SOCCA and the complexity of the annual meeting. In particular, the structure of the combined AUA, SOCCA, and IARS meeting, in its current form—with three independent registrations and fees, independent abstract submission processes, and overlapping educational content—has been a source of concern and confusion for members of the organizations. Because of these developments, SOCCA and the IARS will undertake the following changes while remaining fully aligned in their staunch commitment to advancing academic anesthesiology and critical care.

SOCCA will continue to collaborate with the IARS, Early-Stage Anesthesiology Scholars (eSAS), and others on the Annual Meeting Oversight Committee to plan the 2024 annual meeting, which will be held in Seattle on May 17-19, 2024. SOCCA Members will be asked to serve on the Annual Meeting Oversight Committee to plan the 2024 annual meeting. We will continue to have extensive meeting content devoted to critical care. This will likely be in the form of a critical-care track (similar to the critical-care tracks at the ASA meeting) that will occur every day of the meeting next year. We will have even more critical-care content next year than we have ever had at our Annual Meeting.

A restructuring of administrative support for SOCCA to handle our substantial growth in membership and programs is currently under consideration. We are requesting proposals from several other association management companies, including the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Overall, we view these changes positively, and we collectively maintain an unwavering commitment to promoting academic anesthesiology and critical care.

The SOCCA Board is extensively involved with all of this, and we will keep all our members informed as things progress. Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions as we move forward. In the meantime, plan on attending the next annual meeting in Seattle on May 17-19, 2024.

I hope everyone has a great summer, and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Author

Michael H. Wall, MD, FCCM

President, SOCCA

University of Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota