American College of Surgeons
Leadership Conference for Young Surgeons and Chapter Leaders and Joint Surgical Advocacy Conference (JSAC)
Committee on Young Surgeons
Summary ~ Network Luncheon
March 22, 2009
Grand Hyatt, Washington, DC
by Dinakar Golla, MD, FACS
Below is a summary of the questions and responses from the Young-Surgeon participants during the Networking Luncheon held at the 2009 Young Surgeons Leadership Conference.
1. What are the most important ACS membership benefits for you?
- features of the web portal, case log system, and textbook discounts
- networking opportunities
- scholarships that allow residents to attend clinical conferences
- providing a unified surgical voice for all the subspecialties
- venue for expressing concern about issues and enacting change (ie,training, pay scale—A National Voice)
- advocacy, leadership, and service at the national level
- provides the ability to influence and guide the future of surgery
- provides a means to understanding health policy—long-term impact, how to learn more about local situation, want to know more about the new building in
2. Are there certain aspects about the College that you would like to know more about? If so, please describe.
- various benefits of membership
- explanation of advocacy roles
- structure of ACS hierarchy and regional variations thereof
- It is difficult to be a proponent of what the ACS espouses to older partners or hospital, eg, SCIP, NSQIP. Would be useful to have mentoring on how to get buy-in from those around you in practice, a Power Point presentation may be useful.
3. Have you tried to get involved in the ACS? If so, how?
- Was alerted to involvement by a bill received for membership.
- Guided into ACS involvement via a mentor.
- Responded to email sent to residency program directors.
- It is quite difficult; apparently many of the chapters don’t know about the CYS.
4. What have been your limitations to getting involved in the ACS?
- unsure of appropriate ACS contacts
- address changes/stopped receiving mail
- time
- money
- rural practice and community doc issues; hard to go to meetings, most ACS people are from academic institutions
5. How can the College make it easier to get involved?
- contact chief residents (or earlier)
- face-to-face interactions
- e-mail communication
- multimodality communication (ie, e-mail, surface mail…).
6. What other initiatives should the CYS work on behalf of Young Fellows?
- mentorship program
- individual communication is very important. Have each person work on expanding their personal sphere of influence. Create an email list serve that is sorted to individual interests
- lower the cost of video education materials to members
- offer more help/advice regarding negotiating with your hospital and obtaining funding
- work to increase membership and education activities at resident and chapter levels
- fund a good study on the implications of the 80-hour week for surgery
7. How can you help?
- participate in offered events.
- display enthusiasm to get involved inversely proportional to age/training level of member (ie, younger surgeons less jaded).
Leadership Conference Presentations
Online May 15, 2009