Faye Evans MD awarded the Nicholas M. Greene Award for Outstanding Humanitarian Contribution at the 2022 Annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists
Myron Yaster MD
Many of you know Dr. Faye Evans of the Boston Children’s Hospital…and if you don’t, well, I’d urge you to introduce yourself to her at the next SPA meeting! You won’t regret it! Dr. Evans recently completed her 4 year term on the Board of Directors at the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia and has been a leader in SPA’s Global committee which advocates for increased availability, improved quality and enhanced safety of anesthesia for children worldwide with a specific focus on low- and middle-income countries. The work of this Committee includes developing a pediatric anesthesia lecture series, supporting pediatric anesthesia fellowship training in Kenya and Thailand, sponsoring short courses in pediatric anesthesia for low-resource settings, linking members with volunteer organizations, and partnering with similar organizations to advance these causes.
While sitting at the Rovenstine lecture at the ASA’s annual meeting on Monday, I was simply blown away when they announced that Faye was the recipient of the Nicholas M. Greene award, the highest honor in our profession for global humanitarian outreach. What a wonderful honor that she so richly deserves! I would urge all of you to congratulate her when you see her (faye.evans@childrens.harvard.edu) and perhaps follow my example of donating to Lifebox in her honor. As I hope you know, Lifebox’s mission is to provide pulse oximeters and improve the safety and quality of anesthesia and surgery throughout the world. Myron Yaster MD
https://donate.lifebox.org/give/423146/#!/donation/checkout.
PS: I usually wait until a paper is published in print before posting it in the PAAD. The timing of this online ahead of print was simply too perfect to wait. I took this picture of Faye, Dr. Adrian Bosenberg, and Dr. Zipporah Gathuya at SPA’s annual meeting in New Orleans last week. Dr. Gathuya was sponsored by Bosie and completed her pediatric anesthesia fellowship at the Red Cross Hospital in Capetown, South Africa and on her return to Kenya started the pediatric anesthesia fellowship program at the University of Nairobi. This fellowship is supported by SPA. She will be SPA's Distinguished International Scholar in 2023.
Original article
Faye M Evans, Anna A Krotinger, Maytinee Lilaonitkul, Hiba F Khaled, Gretchen A Pereira, Steven J Staffa, Traci A Wolbrink. Evaluation of Open Access Websites for Anesthesia Education. Anesth Analg. 2022 Aug 18. doi: 10.1213/ANE.0000000000006183. Online ahead of print. PMID: 35983999
“Many educational resources for health care professionals are not publicly available or require fees for access. This lack of open access creates global inequities in the availability and sharing of information and may have the most significant impact on health care providers with the greatest need. The extent of open access online educational websites that are freely accessible to clinicians and trainees in anesthesiology worldwide is unknown. In this study, we aimed to identify and describe available open access online educational websites for anesthesia providers and to evaluate the quality of these websites using a modification of a previously validated medical education website quality evaluation tool.”
Evans et al. “found 37 education websites that provide open access educational resources relevant to anesthesia providers and trainees. While our findings may serve as a valuable resource for anesthesia educators who are looking to supplement synchronous learning activities with existing online learning content, more efforts are needed to expand the number, including those targeted toward clinicians working in LMICs, and improve existing open access websites, including interactivity. The ideal websites would be targeted toward the education of anesthesia clinicians, be open access and updated frequently, have a clear editorial process, and incorporate active learning strategies such as interactivity. Considering the global anesthesia workforce crisis and lack of anesthesia educators in many parts of the world, open access educational websites can help promote education equity by crossing institutional and geographical borders and provide valuable resources for our colleagues working in these areas. However, to transform information into education, these resources will need to be actively and sustainably integrated into formal training and accreditation programs aligned with local and national strategic priorities.”
The PAAD team will more thoroughly review this paper when it is published in print. In the meantime please congratulate Dr. Evans and consider donating to Lifebox. Myron Yaster MD