I hope that many of you were able to attend our annual meeting in Phoenix last month. It was great to be back in-person and see everyone again. As usual, the program was filled with thought-provoking educational sessions and lively discussions by attendees-part of what makes our annual meeting so special! If you haven’t ever attended a SAMBA Annual Meeting, please plan to join us next year at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix on May 17-20, 2023, to see what the excitement is all about!
We will also be hosting a Medical Director’s meeting in Las Vegas on January 13-14, 2023. This is our third Medical Director’s meeting, however, the past two have been virtual so we are delighted to be able to offer this meeting in-person for the first time. It will be held in conjunction with the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association’s (ASCA) Coding and Reimbursement Seminar which may be of interest to our members as well. Please mark your calendars now and take advantage of this opportunity!
We have many educational projects planned for the upcoming year. Our Website Committee is working to update, streamline and improve our website over the next several months. Most of the educational content is available only to our members, so don’t forget to log-in regularly to see the most current information! Some of you have already availed yourself of the website bibliography created last year by our Education Committee. This lists key articles in ambulatory, office-based and NORA anesthesia and includes a brief summary of the article, the PubMed citation, and a link to the original publication. We will continue to add content to this bibliography so that our members can keep abreast of the most recent literature. To familiarize our members with some of the key articles in our bibliography, we will be starting a new feature on our social media platforms called, “Did you know?” This will highlight one of the articles in the bibliography and describe the key findings. It will also provide a link to the article so that members can refer to it for additional information if desired.
Our Education Committee continues to organize our popular Webinars which are complimentary for our members. The next one entitled, Anesthesia for Outpatient Cosmetic Surgery, is scheduled for June 23 at 6 pm CST. If you are unable to attend, a video recording will be made available to members in the SAMBA Video Library.
We hope that you have had the opportunity to read SAMBA’s most recently published statements, “Preoperative Care for Cataract Surgery” and “Statement on Intravenous Catheter Placement, Venipuncture and Blood Pressure Measurements in the Ipsilateral Upper Extremity after Breast Cancer Surgery with and without Axillary Lymph Node Dissection” which can be found on our website. These evidence-based statements review the available literature and make recommendations that our members can use to guide and inform their own practices. The Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee continues its work on new statements and practice guidelines which will address sentinel issues in ambulatory anesthesia.
Finally, it is my sincere privilege to be able to serve as the President of SAMBA for the upcoming year! My thanks to Dr. BobbieJean Sweitzer for all of her hard work and many contributions to SAMBA during her presidency! As a society, our leadership continues to work diligently to create content and educational offerings that help you, our members, provide the best, most up-to-date care for your patients. We would appreciate feedback on how you think we are doing or about ways that we can improve! If you have questions, concerns or suggestions, please e-mail me at sambapresident@sambanew.dream.press. I would love to hear from you!
Dawn Schell, MD
President, SAMBA 2022-2023