Incoming President Alec Patterson Talks about Next Year

Alec Patterson, M.D., the newly elected AATS President, is excited about the upcoming year and is particularly enthusiastic about next year’s AATS 90th Annual Meeting in Toronto.

“Toronto is a wonderful city, with easy international access, a cosmopolitan flair and great opportunities for attendees to experience the local area. Toronto has an extraordinary corridor of hospitals and medical facilities that work together and we are hoping to develop an opportunity for attendees to participate in a special course with a didactic session in the morning, accompanied by an off-site, hands-on training in the afternoon, perhaps at Toronto General Hospital, where they can experience new imaging technologies.

In addition, there are plenty of excellent prospects for guest tours, including nearby wine country, a variety of museums and nearby Niagara-on-the-Lake. The Attendee Reception will be held at the Hockey Hall of Fame.”

Next year’s Annual Meeting will continue the tradition set in Boston with the AATS Academy. AATS is committed to training and developing academic surgeons and academic surgical leaders, and we had an exceptional inaugural AATS Academy that will definitely be repeated in Toronto. We hope to gather another group of potential leaders and present the same type of program with a faculty of cardiothoracic leaders. There was such excitement among the faculty and the attendees with this new initiative that we absolutely must continue it.”

In addition to the Friday session, we hope to add another Academy session on Saturday, focusing on one particular facet of leadership drawn from the original Academy agenda. For example, we may choose something like dealing with conflict management or dealing with hospital management.

“I like the idea of focusing on conflict resolution. One of the issues we could not adequately address within the time constraints of the Academy was ‘How to deal with professionally unacceptable behavior in an academic environment? How do you stop it or prevent it from happening?’ That’s a personal interest of mine and I think we have to address the issue of overbearing, angry surgeons. A large part of the mission of the AATS is to develop academic leaders and professional relationships are an essential part of that. We need to educate our young colleagues in the field of ‘emotional intelligence’ and we need to stress empathy, awareness, and communication. That will be a focus of my entire presidency; I like to think that it is part of who I am. I’m normal and you can accomplish a lot by just being normal.

In anticipation of increased government regulations regarding the separation of industry vendors and physicians, we are working to develop new opportunities for collaboration. If you completely separate doctors from innovation and new opportunities it severely impairs patient care. We are examining ways to expand the exhibit hall into a more advanced educational experience. One example that is being explored is having an ‘operating suite of the future’ on the exhibit floor, which could bring together several companies in a coordinated effort offering demonstration and hands-on training. We will continue to create programs that involve and attract our younger colleagues. The Chairs of the Saturday skills courses, as well as the Sunday postgraduate programs, have made a real effort to involve newer and younger faculty as presenters and moderators.

I am also delighted to announce that the AATS will be presenting the Scientific Achievement Award to Richard D. Weisel, M.D. Dr. Weisel has been a prolific researcher in the field of cardiac physiology. His main areas of concentration have been in myocardial protection and preservation and restoration of myocardial function. Dr. Weisel was educated in Boston and went to Toronto General as a Senior Resident in 1976, where he has remained on faculty. Dr. Weisel was also the AATS Honored Guest Lecturer in 2005 when he presented a lecture on “Cardiac Regeneration.”

The AATS periodically presents the Scientific Achievement Award to honor individuals who have accomplished scientific contributions in the field of thoracic surgery worthy of the highest recognition the Association can bestow.

Finally, I am happy to say that, as part of our efforts to communicate more and more with our membership, our official newspaper, Thoracic Surgery News, is evolving in very exciting ways under the leadership of Dr.Yolonda Colson,” Dr. Patterson concluded.

Past Presidents