AAST's Thursday Cutting Edge Newsletter
Editor's Note
Written By: Dr. Shannon M. Foster
Casinos! Cirque de Soleil! Fancy food at every turn! Moving picture screens everywhere! And let’s call it as it is – amazing people watching wherever you may wander…but the focus and energy has remained fixed on the Paris Las Vegas meeting rooms and the AAST/WTC events. Well done Program Committee and AAST staff for making a riveting educational schedule and expanding the social engagements! As a matter of fact, see the full members of the Program Committee as highlighted in these editions – find them, thank them, and give then positive and constructive feedback.
Friday will bring the Expert Surgeon Lecture from Dr. Amy Goldberg A Look Back...on the Ever-Changing Practice of Trauma Surgery (1030) and Dr. Kristan Staudenmayer moderating the expert panel on Healthcare Economics Making the Case for Value of ACS (1100). The Pacific and Atlantic converging in two truly Cutting Edge leaders.
For all members physically in Las Vegas: please plan your schedule to participate in the Annual Business Meeting at 5 pm Pacific on Friday – you must be in person to be counted, to be heard, and to vote. I suspect you won’t drive by your polling booth this November 5th? So don’t stand in the hallway when the future of this organization is being decided today.
See you tomorrow at Trauma Prom – nominally the closing Banquet and Auction (have you bid yet? CLICK HERE) A time to dress and dine and celebrate the accomplishments of the AAST together
SMF
shannonfostermd@gmail.com
Fitts Lecture: Interview of Dr. Michael Rotondo
Written By: Kaitlin Ritter, MD
SESSION IX: FITTS LECTURE
"THE ACADEMIC MEDICAL CENTER AND THE US HEALTHCARE ECONOMY
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024
11:35 AM - 12:35 PM
Surrounded by the lights, glitz, and glam of Las Vegas, the 83rd Annual Meeting of the AAST promises to be a spectacular event and this year’s Fitts Oration given on Thursday September 12th by Dr. Michael Rotondo will no doubt be a crown jewel of the conference. Entitled “Academic Medicine and the U.S. Healthcare Economy-Altruism, Capitalism, and Egoism” Dr. Rotondo will offer our community his insights into the economic headwinds that challenge all of us in academic medical centers - indeed, within the entire American healthcare system.
As a trauma surgeon and the CEO of University of Rochester, Dr. Rotondo is uniquely positioned to understand these pressures. In preparing for his address, he notes that “American healthcare faces a number of issues on delivering on their mission across clinical care, research, and education.” Items such as operating margins and balance sheets drive our healthcare systems and “the forces of business influence our delivery of care as much as the forces of altruism.”
So how DO we run a sustainable business while still serving our altruistic mission?
Dr. Rotondo believes that surgeons are the key. “We need to be on the solutions side of things instead of having the system subjected on to us.” Exploring options such as financial flexibility, reimaging care delivery processes, and using digital transformation are all key aspects for future economic and healthcare sustainability. While outside entities such as private equity are playing an increasing role in the business of medicine, as surgeons “we know our business better than anybody else. We need to figure out how to work with them to execute more effectively [so we can] put that growth back into our academic mission.”
But it is not just economics that drive the future of acute care surgery. Mentorship is essential. “If you really do care about acute care surgery, if you care about having this specialty continue to thrive in the service to the patient, you have to be committed to others that are willing to take on this challenging work.” Dr. Rotondo credits organizations such as the AAST for helping him find his ‘family.’ He recalls mentors such as Dr. Schwab taking him around the conference and making introductions. It is this guidance and support that he feels is an imperative for all ACS surgeons. “If you can’t impart whatever value you may have to the people that are coming up and working their way through that arc of development, then you’re not really committed to the patients.”
Regardless of the venue, be it the board room, the operating room, or the conference center, Dr. Rotondo’s commitment to the future of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery makes him the natural choice to give this year’s Fitts Oration. His long legacy of accomplishments paired with a deep sense of responsibility to the field of Acute Care Surgery and the collective wisdom brought through his dealings with students, trainees, and physicians who serve its mission will no doubt permeate his lecture. Dr. Rotondo’s address will certainly be an event not to be missed. I look forward
AAST Education Committee
TSACO Patient-Centered Education Collaborative
Written by: Joshua Dilday, DO and Kimberly Hendershot, MD
Imagine the most recent trauma patient you treated. Try to mentally envision the scenario surrounding the event, the initial patient presentation, and the first diagnosis that crossed your mind. Now, think of the next steps you took. Did you whisk the patient away to the operating room to stop the life-threatening hemorrhage? Maybe you escorted the patient to the CT scanner to radiographically identify an enlarging subdural hematoma. Despite your training and experience, some questions might have crept into your mind trying to overstay their welcome like estranged family members over the holidays. Being an expert in your field, you might have quelled this doubt by doing a quick search for a recent article or manuscript on the matter. You could have utilized additional resources – maybe the AAST app was your go-to confirmatory source. Armed with your expertise, gestalt, experience, and literature, you stepped up and did the job you were trained to do.
Now imagine that same scenario but from a different perspective. Try to mentally envision the scenario from the patient’s and family’s perspective. Envision how scary the ambulance sirens must have sounded, how many “big words” the trauma team used when describing the course of action, and how quickly they took you or your loved one away to get a procedure of which you had never heard. Try to imagine how helpless you might feel when the shock, fear, and confusion violently collide in your mind. And then the doctor asks you, “Do you have any questions?”
If you were in your patient’s shoes, you would have a plethora of questions. If you were the patient’s loved one, the volume of your questions would be overwhelming. But those questions might not be given the mental clearance to come to mind at the moment, as the shock and fear paralyze any capacity for questions. Instead, the questions arise after the medical team leaves to perform surgery, start the ICU admission paperwork, or get that follow-up CT scan.
So where do patients and loved ones turn to get their questions addressed? Where can trauma or emergency general surgery patients go to educate themselves on the scary terminology the doctors just hurled their way? A quick purview of PubMed? The latest acute care surgery textbook? These are not easily available to patients or designed to empower patient-centered education. Feely available, easy-to-find, patient-centered educational resources are lacking in the acute care surgery healthcare community. This, in turn, creates a more distraught, overwhelmed, and hopeless scenario for our patients and their loved ones. We can do better to help our patients and families understand their diseases. The AAST and Trauma Surgery and Acute Care Open (TSACO) and the American Trauma Network Trauma Survivors Network (TSN) seek to provide this assistance.
The ”Patient Education Series: Understanding Trauma and Emergency Surgery Conditions” is a collaborative effort between the AAST Education Committee, TSN, and TSACO designed to provide a public service to those who need it most: our patients and their loved ones. By joining forces, we will provide freely available, easily found, patient-centered educational resources vetted by both experts in the acute care surgery world and patient advocates. These articles, published monthly in an open-access academic journal, will provide information on common injuries, diseases, and procedures affecting our patients. Each article will be written for patients and their loved ones; health literacy will be augmented as each article will be written at an elementary school reading level.
Trauma is scary enough without the overwhelming assault of questions and misinformation threatening the peace and autonomy of our patients. Patient-centered educational resources are long overdue in the acute care surgery world. Our patients deserve to have free access to vetted information regarding their current ailments. This initiative aims to empower patients with educational resources throughout their medical journey.
The “Patient Education Series: Understanding Trauma and Emergency Surgery Conditions” initiative kicks off later this fall with expected publication in late September/early October. The first articles will cover rib fractures, appendicitis, and tracheostomy. Additional topics will be published monthly, starting in November. TSACO has created a brand new manuscript category specifically for thi Remember the details below:
The "Patient Education Series: Understanding Trauma and Emergency Surgery Conditions" initiative will begin later this fall, with an expected publication in late September or early October. The first articles will cover rib fractures, appendicitis, and tracheostomy. Additional topics will be published monthly, starting in November. TSACO has even developed a new manuscript category specifically for this initiative. If you have questions or are interested in becoming involved, please get in touch with the team leads, Joshua Dilday (jdilday@mcw.edu) and Kimberly Hendershot (khendershot@uabmc.edu)