President's Message
More on the Pillars of Our Mission
By Jason Reynolds, MD
SPS President
“The Society for Pediatric Sedation® (SPS) will strive to be the international multidisciplinary leader in the advancement of pediatric sedation by promoting safe, high quality care, innovative research and quality professional education.”
In the last newsletter I discussed the three pillars that support our overall mission as a Society – Quality, Research, and Education. Each of these pillars has been organized into a committee, which we consider “mission” committees. Also in the last issue I highlighted the Education Committee, the leaders within the committee, and the important ongoing projects propelling our mission forward.
In this issue I would like to highlight the Research Committee, and share the collective vision of the work this committee has taken on. The Research Committee is chaired by Dr. Joe Cravero, a pediatric anesthesiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and founding-member of SPS. His vision, in collaboration with the other founding members, gave birth to the Pediatric Sedation Research Consortium (PSRC) roughly a decade ago. Since its inception, the PSRC has grown to encompass the multicenter work of over 50 institutions across North America and provided data on over 500,000 sedation encounters. This outstanding work has now culminated in 20+ publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Historically the PSRC has been focused on retrospective descriptive reports of sedation practice. While this work has truly transformed the way we approach sedation care for children, the PSRC is now shifting focus and moving toward prospective multicenter studies to address many of the yet unanswered questions in pediatric sedation. This evolution of the larger PSRC project will be overseen by a newly establish associate chair, Dr. Daniel Tsze, who is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine physician at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. Dr. Tsze is in the final stages of designing a prospective pilot study to look at intranasal sedation.
In addition to the important work of the PSRC, the Research Committee also organizes the scholarly presentations for the annual conference and prepares article reviews for the annual newsletter. Much of this work is led Dr. Jim Hertzog, a Pediatric Critical Care physician at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children. The Society, through the Research Committee, is also looking to equip our members to advance the field of pediatric sedation through scholarly work.
We plan to offer a pilot grant program for scholarly projects in education, quality, or clinical practice. Applications will be scored and awards presented at the annual conference. Look for more information on this exciting program in the coming months.
If you are interested in getting more involved with any of the programs listed above or have new ideas about ways to move our mission forward please find contact information on our committees page, and reach out to me or any of the other leaders listed above.
