It is such an honor to serve as the President of the Surgical Infection Society. I was so pleased to have been able to hold our 40th meeting in person. Although, it was smaller in sheer numbers this year, the work and science that people presented was intensely powerful. We were able to safely attend and network with fellow colleagues, scientists, and friends in person. I would encourage everyone who was unable to attend in person to watch the material on the website: https://www.sisna.org/webinars The content is free and available now. My Presidential address was titled: It’s All About Balance: From Surgical Infections to Life in General. It discusses some of the goals of the organization as well as reviewing some key accomplishments of the SIS members and past leaders. It is abundantly clear to me; the SIS is “well balanced” by being both financially strong with great legacy and can accomplish great things moving forward.
We have some major goals to accomplish this year, and it is paramount to execute on those goals. Last year, we had several retreat sessions that demonstrated the robustness of our membership. The importance of SIS was demonstrated as being an educational and content leader in all things related to infections in surgery. Conversations and work generated from those retreat meetings have resulted in the SIS placing increased effort into moving forward with developing our Fellowship of the Surgical Infection Society (FSIS). I was honored to have Dr. Lilian Kao accept the chair role for this committee. Her first job was awarding the first FSIS class. We are actively working on revising a curriculum for our future fellows and determining criteria for qualification.
Other goals include improving our collaboration and partnership with the SIS Foundation that has provided well over 3.5 million dollars in research funding to our members. We will also have the difficult, but important task, of replacing our executive director and management as the talented Ms. Lynn Hydo retires in 2023. We set an aggressive goal of the Membership Committee, led by Dr. Jeffrey Johnson to recruit a record number of new members this year.
I would like to conclude, by thanking everyone for their personal efforts these past two years during the pandemic. I hope that you have found balance in all that you do, and you make room to support the SIS. I encourage everyone to submit abstracts for this year’s meeting being held April 23 – 26th for the 41st meeting of the SIS. I look forward to seeing everyone in person and learning from our amazing SIS colleagues.
Jeffrey A. Claridge, MD
MetroHealth Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine