MSD Chair's Column

January 2008

Welcome back to the American Society of Anesthesiologists Medical Student Component (ASA MSC) website.  We are a group of medical students committed to educating other students about the field of anesthesiology and promoting the mission of the ASA.  I am very excited about the progress our group has made since our creation several years ago, which includes recently becoming a Component of the ASA, having formerly been a Delegation.  As we proceed through this year, the ASA MSC Governing Council plans on continuing to promote our mission and extend our help and resources to as many students as we can reach, with a goal of having established a contact in every medical and osteopathic school in the country by the Annual Meeting in October 2008.  To accomplish this, we need your help!  Currently, we have delegates representing half of the medical and osteopathic schools in the United States making up our ASA MSC House of Delegates.  If you are a student interested in anesthesiology, I urge you to contact me.  The Governing Council looks forward to helping you learn about resources and opportunities made possible by the ASA, strategies for developing or expanding your school’s Anesthesiology Interest Group, and how to become involved as a delegate.
Thank you for reading – I look forward to hearing from you!  

Omayra Marrero
Chair. ASA MSC
University of Florida
omarrero@ufl.edu

February 2008 (from the ASA Newsletter)

2007: A New Component, New Energy and New Directions

Victor G. Moulin
Immediate past Chair ASA MSC

2007 has been a wonderful year full of opportunities for education and involvement as a medical student member of ASA. The 2007 Annual Meeting in San Francisco proved to be historic and bewildering for the medical students present. The new energy created by the meeting will hopefully translate into more medical student awareness, interest and involvement nationwide. The resolution to make the medical student delegation an independent component also passed, and, therefore, we want to reassure all members of ASA that the Medical Student Component will continue to move the specialty forward at the medical school level.

This year’s meeting was full of enthusiastic and energetic medical students who exchanged ideas for several hours and benefited from hearing about the future of the specialty from one of its pre-eminent leaders, Mark A. Warner, M.D. Additionally, residents from Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts General Hospital and Emory University spoke and answered questions. Several students shared important information, including the delegate from the University of Connecticut who spoke of the new anesthesia interest group of 40 people at her medical school. The hope is that all the new interested students will become active ASA members!

To reiterate, the ASA Medical Student Component exists to get students interested in ASA, to give them resources and knowledge to educate them about anesthesiology, and to create forums and opportunities for students to become involved at every level. The officer duties of the Medical Student Component have been reorganized to better cater to the needs of the medical student members, who now number above 1,000. Among these 1,000 members, 79 medical students, representing 62 medical schools, are delegates to the ASA Medical Student Component. The ASA Medical Student Component officers, in our mission to support the needs of medical student members, independently maintain the ASA Medical Student Web site with the full support of ASA staff. Medical students who have attended the annual meeting have seen Dr. Warner, Alexander A. Hannenberg, M.D., and Mike P. Schweitzer, M.D., speak, with the last two years seeing 70 attendees from around the nation.

To continue the “Excellence in Education” mission of ASA, we are planning an independent curriculum for the medical students at the annual meeting, including I.V., airway and pain workshops. This curriculum can be accomplished by allocating medical student time at the already scheduled workshops, thus minimizing extra budgetary needs for medical student component activities. Because many medical students attend with a secondary purpose of meeting residents and program directors, we have, along with the Resident Component, plans to create a residency fair. The Residency Fair will become an annual event, and, hopefully, residents and their program directors will plan on attending.

Additionally, several academic educators on the ASA Committee on Residents and Medical Students have expressed willingness to conduct Problem-Based-Learning Discussion sessions for medical students at the annual meeting. We also plan to offer advanced cardiac life support instruction for medical students. Lastly, there are plans to expand our lectures into a full lecture series, attracting more world-class speakers. The ultimate goal next year is thus a multiday itinerary, independent of the resident itinerary, specifically for medical students.

In conclusion, many thanks are in order. First and foremost, to the ASA House of Delegates and the Board of Directors for approving the creation of the Medical Student Component and the allocation of funds for medical student activities. Secondly, we want to thank the Committee on Residents and Medical Students Chair Ronald L. Harter, M.D., for supporting the resolution and mentoring our organization since its creation. We also wish to thank the entire committee, which has shown us overwhelming support. Additionally, we wholeheartedly thank the Immediate Past President of the Resident Component, Paloma Toledo, M.D., and current President Christopher R. Cook, D.O., for their constant mentoring and coaching in the workings of ASA. Also, Emmett E. Whitaker, M.D., and Mark A. Hoeft, M.D., two previous chairs of the Medical Student Component, deserve many thanks for continuing to support ASA medical student activities during their residencies. Dr. Whitaker is currently continuing the creation of “The Medical Student Guide to Anesthesiology” and is compiling chapters from many leaders in academic anesthesiology. Finally, the staff of the ASA Executive Office has been extremely helpful in maintaining our Web site and electronic communications with members. Specifically, Denise M. Jones, Janice L. Plack, Anita Abbatacola and Sue Widell have made our initiatives possible. Finally, I wanted to thank the past officers of the component: Omayra L. Marrero, Alan T. Mann, Li Ma, Heather L. Daughters, Andrew C. Porter and R. Scott Stayner. They all worked tirelessly for the sake of the medical student members, who will surely benefit from all their efforts. The current officers, Omayra L. Marrero, Michael J. Oleyar, Saad Hussain, Uel J. Alexis, Nisheeth Rai and Maxwell Opoku-Agyemang, are as dedicated as their predecessors, so I say with certainty that great things are to come for the Medical Student Component! I invite all members of ASA to visit our Medical Student Component Web page at www.asahq.org/msd.

January 2007 (from the ASA Newsletter)

Medical Student Delegation Continuing Growth Spurt

Mark A. Hoeft, Chair
ASA Medical Student Delegation

The Medical Student Delegation (MSD) continues to grow since its inception in 2003 under the auspices of the ASA Resident Component (ASARC). Currently the MSD has more than 900 members in both allopathic and osteopathic schools throughout the United States. As a relatively new section, our primary goal this year has been to build upon the previous work of developing the MSD’s infrastructure. So far a new Web site dedicated to the MSD <www.ASAhq.org/msd> and a listserve have been developed.

The purpose of the MSD has always been twofold: 1) to increase student involvement at the state and national level and 2) to increase student exposure to anesthesiology and perioperative medicine at medical schools across the nation. Utilizing the listserve, MSD members have been recruited from more than 62 medical schools. Furthermore each member school in turn hosts an anesthesiology interest group, further exposing medical students to anesthesiology as a potential career choice. Due to the great interest expressed by member schools, delegate members of the MSD convened at the ASA 2006 Annual Meeting in Chicago last October.

Topics of discussion at this inaugural meeting included the future of the MSD, with its establishment as a separate component from the ASARC and creation and continued support for medical student fellowships, including the Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellowship and the new Medical Student Rural Medicine Fellowship.

An open forum also allowed the students to provide ideas on how the MSD can better serve other medical students. I was impressed with the clarity and vision that so many of the members expressed — it was wonderful to meet so many amazing future leaders of ASA! Unfortunately numerous students who wanted to attend were not able to do so because of financial constraints. It is our hope that over time more anesthesiology departments and state societies will be able to provide funding for students interested in attending the Annual Meeting. In the upcoming year, the MSD hopes to provide more lectures and workshops, including a simulator session and panels on the residency application process.

Though the MSD will act as an organization separate from ASARC, both will have the same general objective of strengthening the field of anesthesiology. While similar in many respects, the MSD and ASARC contain two distinct sets of members with different objectives and needs. The goal will be for our component to have distinct leadership, bylaws and a budget that will allow for the MSD to function as a separate entity from the ASARC but still under the guidance of the Committee on Residents and Medical Students.

This is an exciting time for the MSD, and we thank ASA and ASARC for their continued support! Without them the MSD would certainly not have come this far. In particular we would like to thank Committee on Residents and Medical Students Chair Ronald L. Harter, M.D., who has supported us throughout our inception, and ASARC Immediate Past President Benjamin D. Unger, M.D., who not only guided us through this process but has mentored the leaders of the MSD. We also give special thanks to ASA Director of Information Services Janice L. Plack and Web Administrator Anita Abbatacola, who have both put much time and effort into the creation of a Medical Student Delegation Web site for further medical student outreach, and Assistant Executive Director Denise M. Jones and Membership Services Manager Robert M. Wallace for their administrative support.

I would personally like to thank the 2005-06 MSD Officers: Victor G. Moulin, Chair-Elect; Brad N. Brian, Secretary; Jaya Bahl, Member at Large; Rafael Vazquez, M.D., Senior Advisor; Brad M. Taicher, D.O., Alternate; Jason R. Gillihan, M.D., Alternate; and Zach W. Chambers, Alternate. This was an amazing group of leaders who accomplished far more than was expected over the one-year term.

We hope that the MSD will continue to strengthen ASA and provide leadership opportunities for young physicians interested in pursuing a career in anesthesiology. Questions regarding the Medical Student Delegation may sent to 2005-06 MSD Chair Mark A. Hoeft <mhoeft@uvm.edu>, or 2006-07 MSD Chair Victor G. Moulin <moulin81@gmail.com>.

Mark A. Hoeft, is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, Vermont.