Membership

SPS Membership and Communications Committee Update

By Suzanne Kost, MD, FAAP, FACEP

Greetings on behalf of the SPS Membership and Communications Committee! Our committee had a busy winter, with some exciting developments on the platinum-level institutional member (IM), nursing, and dental fronts. I’ll summarize the news for you.

First, three of our institutional members have taken the plunge and gone platinum since December, bringing our total to 12 platinum-level members (20% of our IMs are now at this level). As a reminder, platinum status grants several advantages to those institutions, for example: all nurses and child life personnel associated with your sedation service receive free membership to the SPS; the institution is given free access to the SPS Provider Course (to use at their facility); Zier-group nitrous oxide education is available at a significantly reduced price; you are entitled to a free SPS expert “consultation” to review your sedation service. Check the website or contact me if you have questions about upgrading your institution.

On the nursing outreach front, the SPS was well-represented at the recent Association for Radiologic and Imaging Nursing (ARIN) conference in Washington DC. Contacts were made and ideas exchanged for sharing education and CEU opportunities on pediatric sedation-related topics. Our members Lorie Reilly and Deb LaViolette are actively seeking help with these projects. Again, let me know if you’re interested in helping and I’ll pass your name along.

Perhaps most exciting from a potential member recruitment and outreach standpoint, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry has chosen the SPS/PSRC (among several choices for collaborative groups) for a pilot project involving collection of dental-specific pediatric sedation data. We are working out the details, but this collaboration has the potential to impact and improve pediatric sedation practice for a huge number of children.

Finally, we hope that you noticed the new and improved look for our website, www.pedsedation.org. We’ve worked hard on updating content and improving access to information. Look for our statement on the FDA Advisory on Anesthesia and Sedation Medication in Children, our Top Ten Reasons to Join the SPS, and other good links in the header area. If you have suggestions for improving the site, or you want to help out with SPS Communications in general, let me know.

We look forward to seeing many of our members in Orlando!