TABLE OF CONTENTS
 Arun Gosain ACAPS President |
In preparation for our fall meeting to be held in conjunction with PSTM in Boston, October 27-30, I want to remind our membership of ACAPS activities during PSTM. Realizing how busy we all are at PSTM, It is helpful to keep these events in mind so that you may participate in our key initiatives.
- Oct. 27 (Thursday): Strategic Planning Meeting (by invitation for all committee chairs, board members, and recent past-presidents)
- Oct. 28-29 (Friday and Saturday): Program Coordinators Meeting Chair: Alyssa Schappe
- *Registration Required
- Oct. 29 (Saturday) 11:30-1:30pm: ACAPS Interim Business Meeting
- *Registration Required
- Oct. 29 (Saturday) 3:30-5:30pm: ACAPS Mentoring Session Chair: Adeyiza Momoh
- Practical and Cutting-Edge Concepts in Effective Mentoring
- *Registration Required
- Oct. 30 (Sunday) 3:30-4:30pm: ACAPS Panel Chair: Julie Park
- Filling the Pipeline: Essential elements for underrepresented in medicine visiting electives
- *Registration Required
If you have not registered, please do so.
In addition, I wish to remind our membership of upcoming deadlines for application to ACAPS grants and awards:
- October 24: Medical Student/Resident Travel Scholarship for ACAPS Winter Meeting
- December 1: ACAPS/PSF Combined Grant: $10,000 grant award focus must be in plastic surgery education, to include education in global health
- December 4: Outstanding Award applications due
- December 5: Goldwyn Visiting Professor Award applications due
This month, we are highlighting the work of the Medical Student Outreach Committee and the Resident Selection Committee. In addition, I will highlight the Goldwyn Visiting Professor program and provide a synopsis of my experience in serving ACAPS in this capacity.
Respectfully,
Arun Gosain
ACAPS President
 Scott Lifchez, MD Chair |
Co-Chair: Greg Pearson
The medical student outreach committee organized virtual meet and greet sessions for integrated residency programs as we have done in prior years. These hour-long sessions were designed to let interested medical students learn more about programs that they may not have the opportunity to visit for a rotation. Sessions were scheduled to avoid conflict between programs and to facilitate faculty availability, particularly for programs on the West Coast. Interest in the meet and greet sessions among programs was even higher than expected, and several additional sessions were scheduled beyond the original endpoint of September 30 to allow for all the interested program to participate.
The committee is also working through our co-chairs vice-deans of students to identify appropriate points of contact for medical schools with no home plastic surgery residency program. With these points of contact, we will better be able to reach all students at these medical schools who may be interested in plastic surgery to help them connect to mentors in plastic surgery through the MS outreach committee. This program is particularly targeted to medical students prior to their senior year.
 Jeff Kozlow, MD Chair |
Co-Chair: Abigail Chaffin
The Resident Selection Committee will plan to evaluate opportunities for cohesiveness within the application process. This will include looking for opportunities to create timelines and policies that can be uniformly understood by both applicants and programs. We will work to increase direct communication related to the Match process for students. This will include ongoing evaluation of the PSCA and ERAS platforms including balancing the benefits of both. We also will look for opportunities to improve the process of visiting student rotations including helping students understand the criteria used by programs in the application process for these experiences.
Arun Gosain (Goldwyn Visiting Professor, 2021-2022)
The Robert Goldwyn Visiting Professor Award was initiated by Joe Serletti in 2012. The award is given annually to an ACAPS member who has contributed significantly to the development of ethical, compassionate and academically productive surgeons for the next generation, in the manner of Dr. Goldwyn as a respected mentor and career counselor. The awardees to date are Paul Manson (2012), Bill Futrell (2013), Julian Pribaz (2014), Joe McCarthy (2015), Ray Morgan (2016), Joe Serletti (2017), Jim Zins (2018), Linda Phillips (2019), Arun Gosain (2021), and Joe Losee (2022).
It was a tremendous honor to have served in this capacity for 2021-2022. In addition to addressing our membership at PSTM 2021 and at the ACAPS Winter Meeting last February, I had the pleasure of having in-person visits at 11 plastic surgery training programs.
| PROGRAM | PRIMARY HOST |
| Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale | Bill Casey |
| Albany Medical Center | Ash Patel |
| Emory University | Joe Williams |
| Baylor Scott & White Medical Center | Bob Weber |
| Baylor College of Medicine | Larry Hollier |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison | Brett Michelloti |
| UTMB Galveston | Linda Phillips |
| Duke University | Brett Phillips |
| The Ohio State University | Greg Pearson |
| University of Texas Southwestern | Bardia Amirlak and Andy Zhang |
| Washington University in St. Louis | Justin Sacks |
While this is a heavy traveling schedule, I felt it was worthwhile to reinvigorate the Goldwyn Visiting Professor program following an extended absence of in-person visits due to COVID. For many programs, this was their first in-person visiting professor in the past two years. The faculty hosts and chief residents at each of these programs went out of their way to accommodate my visit, often rescheduling multiple times as the COVID pandemic waxed and waned. However, no program wished to substitute a virtual visit for an in-person visit, demonstrating the value that residents place on in-person interaction even in the present age of increasing reliance on virtual platforms. My hosts included many key members of ACAPS, which is a testament to the bonds which we develop through involvement in ACAPS. I believe that there is no better way to gage the mood of a program than by making an in-person visit; nor is a virtual visit a substitute to allow residents to get to personally interact and exchange ideas with leaders in our field. I came away highly impressed with the commitment to teaching and the eagerness of the residents to absorb these lessons in all the programs I visited. The past year has shown me the respect that our training programs hold for the Goldwyn Visiting Professorship. Joe Losee is serving as our current Goldwyn Visiting Professor, and I have no doubt that he will continue to strengthen the reputation of the Professorship in the coming year.
Nominations should be accompanied by a letter outlining the contributions and attributes of the individual that make them an appropriate candidate for the award. Nominations should be sent to the ACAPS Administrative Offices and should be received no later than Monday, December 5, 2022.