Education Committee Update

Suken A. Shah, MD
Education Committee Chair

The Education Committee is responsible for the educational programs (Pre-Meeting Course, Half-Day Courses, and Lunchtime Symposia) for the 53^rd Annual Meeting & Course in Bologna and is already hard at work. Our thanks goes to Praveen Mummaneni, MD, our past chair, for coordinating activities last year and making a seamless transition. The presentations and contributions by our entire course faculty were much appreciated, and the post-meeting evaluations reflected that! We have reviewed the feedback from the program at the 52^nd Annual Meeting & Course in Philadelphia and integrated it for the activities going forward. Using a strategy called “backward planning,” we have assessed our members’ needs and learners’ knowledge gaps to determine what educational offerings we should provide. The committee was fortunate to receive 35 proposals for educational activities this year and we assessed these proposals using 4 objective criteria.  A conference call was conducted to discuss these proposals and retool and modify some of them into a working educational package for the Annual Meeting and the year ahead.  We also plan to offer 4-5 webinars throughout the year for our members to receive online education.  I’d like to thank the committee members for their work so far, knowing there is more to be done and the Education Council Chair, John Dimar, MD as well as our president, Todd Albert, MD for their guidance with the program. The theme for the 53^rd Annual Meeting's Pre-Meeting Course is: “Spine Surgeon Well Being for the Benefit of Our Patients.” Speakers will include thought leaders from the SRS as well as invited speakers from other specialties to discuss topics such as lifelong learning, coaching, mentoring, work/life balance, and surgeon preservation by avoiding burnout, stress, radiation, and overuse injuries.  The topics for Half Day Courses and Lunchtime Symposia at the 53^rd Annual Meeting are being formulated now and can be expected to be broad in scope, innovative in design and encourage international participation.

The Educational Committee is also interfacing with other organizations such as AAOS, POSNA, AOSpine (Global Spine Congress), EUROSPINE, FOSA, and the AANS-CNS Joint Spine Section for co-branded offerings.  We have recruited several individuals to help with these efforts including Sigurd Berven MD, Michael Daubs MD, Marinus De Kleuver MD PhD, Benny Dahl MD, James Sanders MD, Michael Vitale MD, Rajiv Sethi MD and Praveen Mummaneni, MD. The Education Committee is in close communication with the Worldwide Course Committee for international conference planning. We also interact with the Program Committee and the CME Committee to achieve our goals for the year.

I wish to extend a personal thank you to Courtney Kissinger – our Senior Education Manager- for her logistical support, responsiveness and guidance as we seek to continue the legacy of educational excellence of this Society.

 

Chair: Suken A. Shah Committee: Praveen V. Mummaneni, Past Chair; Gregory M. Mundis, Program; David H. Clements III, CME; Richard H. Gross; S. Rajasekaran; Yan Wang; Keith R. Bachmann (C); Robert H. Cho (C); Alan H. Daniels (C); Olavo B. Letaif (C); Gabriel KP Liu (C); Scott C. Nelson (C); Rodrigo G. Remondino (C); Denis Sakai (C); Jason W. Savage (C); Masood Shafafy (C); William F. Young (C); Charles H. Crawford III; Paul T. Rubery; Burt Yaszay, Chair Elect; Benny T. Dahl, WWC; Marco Brayda-Bruno; Michael D. Daubs; Baron Lonner; Ahmet Alanay; Charles E. Johnston