Reflections on the 2015 Society for Pediatric Sedation Annual Conference

By Lia Lowrie, MD
2015 SPS Conference Program Chair

If you were unable to join us in St. Louis for the SPS Annual Conference we missed you!  If you were able to attend, I want to thank you for the spirited and engaging conversations that were so in evidence this year.  As Program Chair for the 2015 meeting I had hoped to engender an “all teach, all learn” spirit by focusing more on breakout sessions and opportunities for engaging all clinicians whether just learning how to deliver quality procedural sedation services for children or having done so for years.  From the conversation buzz at the opening reception, through the SPS strategic planning focus group lunch on Monday (from which I had difficulty moving you all back into sessions!), through all the breakout sessions, our very successful poster reception and even during question and answer sessions after the plenary sessions, open dialogue was evident, rewarding and constructive.

This newsletter includes many summaries of the plenary sessions.  I am so grateful to all the plenary speakers, the breakout session presenters and the workshop faculty who so graciously accepted my invitation to speak, promptly filled out speaker CME forms (being a Program Chair is certainly an education in what it means to sponsor CME and CEU’s!), obviously spent time during busy professional lives to put together quality talks and who entered into the spirit of dialogue wholeheartedly.

We as a Society are still experimenting a bit with the structure and length of the Annual Conference.  This year, we went back to a primarily two-day conference with Society Committee meetings on Sunday afternoon before the opening Welcome Reception.  Though of course the weather decided to cooperate in St. Louis which would have allowed for a half a day to explore the sights – that would have been lovely!

However, the committee meetings were well attended.  The other experiment was moving the SPS Sedation Provider Course to follow the conference rather than presenting it on Sunday.  The Course filled and despite some adventures in shuttle bus travel between the hotel and School of Medicine Simulation Center, it seemed to be a successful educational endeavor once again.

We are still in the process of hearing from you with your evaluations of the Annual Conference.  If you haven’t had a chance to provide feedback, I urge you to do so.  Mick Connors and the Program Committee at Connecticut Children’s have already begun the planning stages for the 2016 Annual Conference and we really do want to provide educational opportunities that SPS members find helpful.  I hope to see you in Hartford in 2016 and BRING A FRIEND!