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ASA NEWSLETTER
 
 
July 2006
Volume 70
Number 7

Emery A. Rovenstine Memorial Lecture:
Jerry Reves, M.D., to Present ‘We Are What We Make’

Rebecca S. Twersky, M.D., M.P.H., Chair
Section on Annual Meeting


Jerry Reves, M.D.

The Emery A. Rovenstine Memorial Lecture
“We Are What We Make”
Monday, October 16, from 11:15 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. at McCormick Place, Room E354B.



erry Reves, M.D., will present the Emery A. Rovenstine Memorial Lecture at the ASA 2006 Annual Meeting on Monday, October 16, from 11:15 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois. His lecture is “We Are What We Make” and will explore the state of academic anesthesiology today and in the future.

The Rovenstine Lecture is a longstanding high point of the Annual Meeting and honors Dr. Rovenstine, the distinguished past chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at New York University Medical Center and Director of Anesthesiology at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Dr. Rovenstine was a founding member and president of the American Board of Anesthesiology, ASA president in 1943-44 and the 1957 recipient of the ASA Distinguished Service Award. Because of his seminal contributions to the specialty, especially as an administrator and educator, this prestigious lectureship was established in his name. The ASA president chooses the lecturer as part of his/her duties, and the lecture is always one of the highlights of the Annual Meeting.

Dr. Jerry Reves is a Charleston, South Carolina, native. He received his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, then returned to Charleston to earn his medical degree from the Medical College of South Carolina in 1969. He then completed his anesthesiology residency at the University of Alabama Hospital and Clinics in Birmingham. He served in the Navy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland before returning to Birmingham to join the faculty, where he became Professor of Anesthesiology and Director of Anesthesiology Research. In 1984, he joined Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, as Professor of Anesthesiology and Director of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia. He helped found the Duke Heart Center and served as its first director. Dr. Reves became chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology in 1991; in 2001 he returned to Charleston as Dean of the College of Medicine and Vice-President for Medical Affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). He currently holds a dual appointment as Professor of Anesthesia and Perioperative Medicine and Professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Dr. Reves has been active in ASA since the beginning of his career. He has been a member of ASA since 1970 and has served on the state component societies of Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina. He has chaired many ASA committees, including the committees on Clinical Circulation and Geriatric Anesthesia and the Task Force on Graduate Medical Education, the ASA Workforce Task Force in 1984 and most recently the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) Task Force on Academic Anesthesia. Dr. Reves received a FAER grant as Chief of Anesthesia Research at Birmingham and has mentored several others who have received FAER funding. He has served as Editor of Anesthesia & Analgesia and consultant editor to Anesthesiology and many other journals. He has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers, was awarded four National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants totaling more than $6 million in funding and is the author of 14 books and monographs.

Dr. Reves has been a president of the Southern Society of Anesthesiologists, the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists (SCA) and the Association of Cardiac Anesthesiologists. He is on the Association of American Medical Colleges Liaison Committee to the Veterans Administration and serves on several education advisory committees in the state of South Carolina. As a pioneer clinical investigator who helped to launch the cardiac anesthesiology subspecialty, Dr. Reves served as the first elected president of SCA (1979) and was honored this year by receiving that society’s Distinguished Service Award.

Dr. Reves is nationally recognized for his contributions to anesthesia clinical research. His research career began during medical school when he worked as a research assistant in the Department of Pharmacology under the tutelage of Robert Walton. M.D. As the Director of the University of Alabama’s Division of Anesthesiology Research, Dr. Reves laid the foundation for the department’s NIH funding, setting the course for its thriving program. His research focused on aging and cognition after cardiac surgery. His work has been published in more than 200 scientific publications, and under his leadership, the Duke Department of Anesthesiology ranked as high as number two in NIH funding nationally. His scholarly interests today focus on medical education, interdisciplinary research programs and educational facilities.

Dr. Reves has been in academic medicine for more than 30 years. He is credited with creating the nation’s most prominent cardiovascular anesthesiology fellowship program, co-chaired the curriculum committee of the Duke University School of Medicine and initiated a physiology simulator in the Duke medical school curriculum. In 2001, Dr. Reves returned “home” as the Dean of the School of Medicine at MUSC, where he has created a single Department of Neurosciences from the departments of neurology, neurosurgery and neuroscience. He has re-invigorated the Hollings Cancer Center, the Aging Center and the Heart and Vascular Center. He also recently brought the international leader of simulator education, John Schaefer, M.D., to the MUSC Department of Anesthesiology.

Dr. and Mrs. Reves have three daughters and one granddaughter. He is active in Charleston civic organizations and serves on the board of the Charleston Habitat for Humanity. For recreation he plays tennis and runs, and he and Mrs. Reves are perfecting the art of trawler sailing.

Despite his demands as Dean of the College of Medicine, Dr. Reves spends time with medical students considering anesthesiology as a career and serves as their medical school career advisor. As a reflection of his efforts, 12 students out of 143 chose anesthesiology in the class of 2006.

Dr. Reves has clearly endeared himself to many of us personally, as a mentor, superb clinician and astute researcher. He carries the mantle of our specialty beyond the physical boundaries of departments of anesthesiology. We can all be proud of the leadership that he has shown in academic medicine. Please join me as Dr. Reves delivers this coveted Rovenstine Memorial Lecture at the 2006 Annual Meeting in Chicago.




   
Rebecca S. Twersky, M.D., M.P.H., is Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology and Vice-Chair for Research, State University of New York Downstate Medical Center-Brooklyn, and Medical Director, Ambulatory Surgery Unit, Long Island College Hospital, Brooklyn, New York.

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