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Become a member and receive career-enhancing benefits

Our top priority is providing value to members. Your Member Services team is here to ensure you maximize your ACS member benefits, participate in College activities, and engage with your ACS colleagues. It's all here.

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ACS
Travel Report

Energetic Statewide NY Chapter Meeting Includes In-Depth Talks and Camaraderie

June 17, 2025

The New York Chapter of the ACS held its first statewide educational meeting in over a decade on May 2–4 at the Sagamore Hotel in Bolton Landing, New York. Chapter President Anthony Vine, MD, FACS, provided a firsthand account of the expansive meeting, which included a range of lectures and presentations from current and past ACS leaders, cutting-edge clinical topics, hands-on demonstrations on a surgical robot, and much more.

In addition to nearly 100 attendees from across the state, we were joined by 28 faculty including two pioneering women in the field of surgery: Patricia L. Turner, MD, MBA, FACS, ACS Executive Director & CEO, and Patricia Numann, MD, FACS, founder of the Association of Women Surgeons and a former President of the ACS.

While the full program offered a broad range of lectures and podium presentations, highlights included NY Chapter Governor and Treasurer Michel Vella, MD, MBA, FACS, moderating a dynamic “Stump the Experts” session in trauma. The agenda also featured a timely ethics panel on the “Medical Aid in Dying” legislation, recently passed by the New York State Assembly and currently under Senate consideration, as well as innovative discussions on the integration of artificial intelligence in surgery.

The meeting also featured excellent resident podium presentations on topics ranging from trauma and breast disease to hepatobiliary and frailty issues.

Each day featured “quick shot” oral presentations by both medical students and residents, as well as poster sessions and ACS Stop the Bleed training based on the current curriculum, also run by Dr. Vella and the Stop the Bleed team, for both attendees and faculty.

Throughout the weekend, attendees had the opportunity to participate in hands-on demonstrations using the da Vinci 5 surgical robot, gaining direct experience with advanced technology. These sessions culminated on Sunday in the Resident Robotic Team Competition.

Our attendees included surgeons from a range of specialties and practice settings, rural, private, and academic, representing regions across New York, including Manhattan, Staten Island, Long Island, Westchester, Orange County, Albany, Syracuse, and Rochester. Many brought their families, making the weekend not only professionally enriching but personally meaningful as well.

The highlight on Saturday morning was the comprehensive and incisive keynote lecture by Dr. Patricia Turner on the current state of the ACS and its future direction. The penultimate lecture on Sunday, prior to my concluding remarks, was delivered by Dr. Numann on “The Joy of Surgery.”  Dr. Numann was proud that not only was an annual NY Chapter ACS award named in her honor, but also that the initial recipient was one of her former trainees, orthopaedic surgeon and NY Chapter ACS Governor Danielle Katz, MD, FACS.

Following Dr. Numann’s remarks, I offered some reflections on the language of our shared profession. I spoke about how “surgeon” derives from the Greek roots for “working” with our “hands,” how “doctor,” from the Latin doceo (“to teach”), implies a duty to educate our patients and trainees, and how “patient,” from pateo, patere, passus sum, reminds us that those we care for are those who suffer. “Advocacy,” from ad-vocare, is not merely political—it calls us to speak on behalf of our patients, our principles, and our profession. I closed by quoting Hippocrates’ Precept #6: “Where there is love of man, there too is love of the art of medicine.”

The NY Chapter is abuzz with activity, as seen in our ongoing advocacy efforts in Albany and the federal level, educational webinars, active involvement in the Medical Society of the State of New York, scheduled Stop the Bleed programs, or our success as a participant in the ACS Combined State-National Dues Program.

As our New York State motto from 1778 affirms, the only direction for our chapter is ever “upward”—Excelsior!—always aspiring to be greater.

I am indebted to everyone who helped to make this event a highlight of our Chapter’s agenda this year: Jacob Moalem, MD, FACS, NY Chapter ACS Governor and Immediate Past Chapter President, who envisioned this meeting; Reza Saidi, MD, FACS, and the Program Committee; and especially our Executive Director Babette Atkins, along with her colleague Anita Amin.

Anthony J. Vine, MD, FACS
ACS New York Chapter President