A President’s Farewell

   As my term as president of APSPA comes to an end I would like to extend my gratitude to everyone who voted and elected me to take that post. It was my honor to serve on behave of all PA’s that practice in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Without your support and hard work none of the achievements would happen.

  Let me reflect on few changes that have taken place since I took this position. One of my goals was to provide our Association with tools of communication with our members and other PA Societies- that led us to make changes in our website and it’s platform. We are now better connected with our colleagues and our members have better functioning website. It’s much easier for board members to navigate it, write articles, newsletters, post photos into media library and etc. We have dedicated webmaster, Dan Cohen who helps us to maintain it.

   We have a goal to offer our members tools and resources that they can use. We run a Salary Survey that helps PA’s compare and gage their financial goals. We included a lot of relevant questions that we all need to create a proper and mutually beneficial contracts with surgeons and medical facilities. We still need to improve on some areas and this was a good start to provide this survey and gather information for future one. In order to maintain and increase our membership we have to keep our website engaging, interesting and beneficial to everyone who joins us. To do that we proposed few innovations. One- we creating a “Member’s Corner” where all of our members can share their stories, professional achievements and future goals with others. Being a Plastic Surgery PA is somewhat unique and we all work in different sub specialties of this field. It will be wonderful to read about each other experiences and what our colleagues do on a day to day basis. Many of us have been working for many years and acquired a great experience that even many plastic surgeons would be interested to read about.  Second- we are thinking of creating a “Specialty Suture Workshop” for our  AAPA Conferences where we can teach PA’s from all specialties to advanced suture techniques. We can add other topics, such as laser machines, Injectables, and other non invasive procedures that have gotten very popular in last years. To accomplish these goals we need to keep exciting momentum and work together to achieve them.

   I will be serving a two year term as a Past President and my goal will be to stay active and provide all the support that our next President Kristen Daniels will need. I am very happy and excited to “pass my torch”of presidency to Kristen, who is very qualified and eager to move our Association forward. As I mentioned in the beginning, the success of my presidency was possible because  board members very active and supportive in many ways. I would ask everyone in our Association to continue being active hence this is beneficial to all of us. Together we can set goals, work on them and achieve them. 

   This is the time of great changes in our profession. We are moving forward with Optimal Team Practice that will set us free of unnecessary restrictions, extend medical care to patients and set us at appropriate level in a changing healthcare marketplace.

   I thank each Member of our Association for continued support and trust in us. Without you we would not have APSPA and we will be working hard on providing you with all the tools, and information that’s beneficial to you.