Pediatric Anesthesia Visiting Professor/Scholar Program
Myron Yaster MD, John Fiadjoe MD, and Lynne Maxwell, MD
Original Article
Ferschl MB, Boscardin C, Ravula N, Infosino A. Implementation and Assessment of a Visiting Scholar Exchange Program in Pediatric Anesthesiology to Promote Junior Faculty and Fellow Professional Development. J Educ Perioper Med. 2021 Apr 1;23(2):E661. PMID: 34104675
Original Article
Marla B Ferschl, Jennifer K Lee, Justin L Lockman, Stephanie Black, Debnath Chatterjee, Rita Agarwal, Lawrence I Schwartz, John Fiadjoe, Eugenie Heitmiller, Bommy Hong Mershon, Nina Deutsch, John McCloskey 2, Andrew Infosino. East/West Visiting Scholars in Pediatric Anesthesia Program (ViSiPAP): Developing tomorrow's pediatric anesthesia leaders. Paediatr Anaesth. 2020 Jul;30(7):743-748. PMID: 32267048
We generally try to pick articles for the PAAD that have wide applicability and interest to most, if not all, of you. Today’s is a bit different…it is meant primarily for academic anesthesiologists (and fellows) at the early stages of their career development and for their mentors and sponsors. This is of such great personal importance to us that we wanted to share the findings and insights of these papers to the PAAD readership. Further, the Journal of Education in Perioperative Medicine, the official electronic journal of the Society for Education in Anesthesia, is “an open access journal that publishes highly topical clinical research relating to the perioperative care of surgical patients. Its essence is the distillation, examination and application of clinical evidence to improve surgical outcome”. It is currently not on our routine PAAD radar but can be if you, the readers, would like it to be. Just let us know.
About once or twice a month, each one us gets requests from various academic institutions across America for letters of recommendation for faculty promotion. Regardless of the institution, one key for promotion is the development of a national (associate professor) or international (professor) reputation. When first starting out, or even for some more senior faculty well along in their careers, how do you establish a national or international reputation and establish a professional network outside of your home institution who can write these letters of recommendation? And, if you don’t know someone like us, how do you break into the “show” (SPA, ASA, SEA meetings) and develop a national reputation and network of professional colleagues? One novel method was the creation of the Visiting Scholars in Pediatric Anesthesia Program (ViSiPAP), which is described in these articles. Another, the Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Initiative (WELI), is designed “to empower highly productive women pediatric anesthesiologists to achieve equity, promotion, and leadership”. Developed by Drs. Jennifer Lee, Nina Deutsch, and Jamie Schwartz of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia, this fantastic program is one that we would urge you to check out on their website for more details…https://weli.pedsanesthesia.org/leadership-and-steering-committee/
A classic method of developing a national reputation is to be invited by an institution outside of your home geographical base as a visiting professor. “Visiting professorships involve in-person opportunities for networking, the exchange of ideas and the potential for future collaboration, and provide the visiting professor an extramural opportunity to share expertise. However, visiting professorships are usually reserved for established senior faculty with national reputations”. To help both junior faculty and fellows jumpstart their academic careers in pediatric anesthesia the authors created ViSiPAP as a professional development program. Basically, “it is a reciprocal faculty exchange program, in which the visiting faculty spend the day as visiting scholars at the host institution and present grand rounds and/or didactic fellow lectures showcasing their scholarly activity. One-on-one meetings, lunches, and dinners are arranged to foster collaboration and networking between the visiting scholars and the faculty and trainees from the host institution. Relationship ties within the network provide access to assets, advice, and opportunities which are particularly important for social capital”. To maximize exposure and to keep travel and time away from the visitor’s “mothership” costs to a minimum, the visiting scholar goes to 3 or 4 institutions that are in geographic proximity during a one-week period. The “sending” institution then reciprocates and accepts a scholar from the “host” institution.
Not surprisingly, the results have been nothing short of spectacular. “Participating in ViSiPAP catalyzed 92 documented additional presentations or publications. Many exchanges occurred in the months just prior to this (study’s) survey’s distribution, suggesting that our survey may underrepresent the total academic output resulting from ViSiPAP”. ViSiPAP has also specifically targeted women and underrepresented minorities and may be an important new tool to enhance retention and promotion and thereby lead to a more diverse academic faculty.
Finally, there have been some barriers to ViSiPAP’s implementation. Obviously, Covid 19 has limited in-person exchanges. Although virtual exchanges have occurred over the past year, we don’t think they are equivalent to live, in-person experiences. The authors also point out that in some institutions “persuading departmental chairs or division chiefs to provide the required financial support to subsidize faculty nonclinical time, travel, and host expenses” and “convincing division chiefs and program directors of the value of joining ViSiPAP for their faculty and fellows” has been an issue.
As the authors conclude “ViSiPAP assists with fellow and faculty professional identity formation, augments networking and collaboration, and provides a springboard for launching academic careers”. We applaud the authors and all of the 17 programs that are members of the ViSiPAP and wish it continued success and growth in the future.
Myron Yaster MD, John Fiadjoe MD, and Lynne Maxwell, MD