Dear UCSF Naffziger Surgical Society Members,
I hope all of you received my December 28, 2012 “Save the Date” message and have made plans to attend our annual meeting and dinner. This year we are pleased to be collaborating with the UCSF Department of Surgery, scheduling the Naffziger program in conjunction with the Department’s 2013 Post Graduate Course in General Surgery. Drs. Nancy Ascher and Hobart Harris have been extremely helpful in planning this year’s meeting.
We have arranged for Friday May 17th to be our Naffziger Day with the Naffziger program running from 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM (see attached program for the entire 2-day PG graduate course, with our Friday Naffziger program highlighted). As Naffziger members, you are welcome to attend ANY of the PG Course lectures, either before and after our Naffziger program, free of charge.
For those who have chosen not to attend any or all of the clinical lectures from 7:00-10:00, we have reserved a “break out” room where we hope some of you may be able to gather with colleagues that you haven’t seen in a while ( i.e., a reunion). Some of you have requested such a gathering place in the past.
We have tried to design a program that will be of general interest to you, whatever your special clinical interests, type of practice, private or academic, urban or more rural.
Highlights of the program include:
- Brief reports from selected UCSF residency graduates who are 1, 5, 10, 15 and 45! years out. They will talk about the challenges and opportunities they see. We hope this will provoke a dialogue with all of you.
- An outstanding panel comprised of Drs. Blaisdell, Lewis, Deveney, Ascher and Pellegrini. They will discuss the challenges we face with surgical GME, training and continuing education in the 21st Century. Again, we will seek your input.
- Annual Business Meeting (Lunch included) – lots of important things to discuss and decide regarding our future.
- The old Naffziger Rounds, which we are re-establishing with an electronic twist. You will be presented several challenging cases and will have an electronic voting device at your seat. You will be ask “what would you do?” and we will be able to project collated (not individual) opinions – the “Collective Naffziger Intelligence”
- Our 2013 Naffziger Lecturer whom I’m delighted to tell all of you about. He is Carlos Pelligrini, M.D., FACS, Professor of Surgery/Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Washington, and President-elect American College of Surgeons.
- Dr. Pelligrini’s topic is The Surgeon as a Leader; Improving Quality, Decreasing Costs, highly relevant for all of us facing the changing landscape of health care in the U.S.
Past Naffziger President James Macho and President-elect Carlos Corvera have been extensively involved and enormously helpful in creating this program as has Annette Bronstein who found One Market for us.
I’ve heard from many of you a desire to try something new for our Naffzger dinner to enliven your SF trip for our meeting. To that end, our annual Naffziger dinner at 6:30 PM will be at a new (for us) and exciting location, with no added cost beyond previous dinners.
One Market Restaurant 1 Market St.
San Francisco, CA 94105
Based on last year’s dinner attendance, we should have plenty of room. However, we ultimately have a limited seating capacity. So if you and your significant other want to attend the dinner, please RSVP ASAP to ensure your place.
I am personally excited about this year’s Naffziger Day and hope to see many of you on May 17th. Let’s continue the rejuvenation of our UCSF surgical heritage as led by Presidents Blaisdell and Macho over the past several years.
There should not be a more proud and sustainable society of surgeons than we, who have had the privilege and great fortune to train at UCSF.
Best wishes,
A. Brent Eastman, MD, FACS, FRCSEd (Hon)
President, UCSF Naffziger Surgical Society
President, American College of Surgeons