After its 2016 beginning as a reciprocal exchange between the UC San Francisco and UC Davis Departments of Anesthesia, the Visiting Scholars in Pediatric Anesthesia Program (ViSiPAP) program rapidly expanded to other pediatric anesthesia divisions on the west coast and then to other programs across the country. By offering opportunities for junior faculty and fellows in pediatric anesthesia to become visiting scholars at other institutions – and by bringing in experts from other institutions – the program’s growth reflects its important contribution to the professional growth of faculty and fellows in pediatric anesthesia.
In 2019, three prestigious institutions on the east coast – Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Children’s National and Johns Hopkins – joined the program.
The Roots of ViSiPAP
When the pediatric anesthesia division within the UCSF Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care moved to a new hospital in 2015, its faculty loved the dynamic new UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, but they also felt a sudden sense of academic isolation linked to their physical separation from the rest of the department. “We found ourselves thinking about how to establish an academic community for pediatric anesthesia at Mission Bay,” says Andrew Infosino, MD, who led the creation of ViSiPAP.
That thinking led to Infosino and his colleagues also seeking ways to help junior clinical faculty gain experiences that could help them advance their careers in academic medicine. “Clinical educators in pediatric anesthesia often find it more difficult to achieve academic promotions than their colleagues involved in research,” he says. Infosino brought this concern to Department Chair Michael Gropper, MD, PhD, and they decided that one potential solution would be to establish visiting scholar opportunities for junior faculty who are clinical educators.
With that in mind, Infosino worked with Niroop Ravula, MD, of UC Davis Health to set up the first ViSiPAP faculty exchange between UCSF and UC Davis. He then established ViSiPAP faculty exchanges with all of the pediatric anesthesia divisions on the west coast with pediatric anesthesia fellowships: Stanford, UCLA, Loma Linda, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, Oregon Health and Science University, Seattle Children’s, Children’s Hospital Colorado and the University of New Mexico. Visiting professors spend a day meeting with faculty and fellows at the hosting institution and give a presentation at either a fellow’s conference or Grand Rounds. ViSiPAP was initially supported by a grant from the UCSF Chancellor’s Fund for Faculty Enrichment, and its ongoing support comes from each participating anesthesia department.
The initial aims of ViSiPAP were to:
- Improve faculty well-being and decrease academic isolation by creating a pediatric anesthesia community.
- Increase the level of scholarly activity in pediatric anesthesia at the participating institutions.
- Create visiting scholar opportunities for junior and mid-level faculty that are clinician educators and enhance their promotion.
- Provide outside expertise and enhance continuing education for pediatric anesthesia faculty.
- Cultivate relationships with pediatric anesthesia divisions at other institutions to facilitate academic collaborationon clinical and research projects.
During these early faculty exchanges, Infosino, Ravula and Michael Lennig, MD, from Stanford realized that they could also include the pediatric anesthesia fellows in these more local exchanges. Thus, ViSiPAP exchanges between UCSF, UC Davis and Stanford pair a pediatric anesthesia fellow with a faculty mentor. Both travel to the hosting institution as visiting scholars to meet fellows and faculty and each give a presentation. “We strategically choose topics based on the visiting faculty and fellows’ expertise and the educational gaps of the hosting institution,” says Infosino. “For the fellows, having to present enables them to develop focused areas of expertise and promotes their transition from trainee to faculty, while also providing them with networking and employment opportunities.”
At UCSF, the ViSiPAP faculty and fellows present at a weekly Pediatric Anesthesia Fellows and Faculty Conference that was created at the same time as ViSiPAP by Infosino and Marla Ferschl, MD, director of the UCSF Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship. ViSiPAP presentations have run the gamut, from conflict management in the operating room and anesthetic concerns for anterior spinal tethering to using virtual reality headsets for pediatric patients, precision medicine and developing a pediatric airway team. UCSF anesthesia faculty – and faculty from other UCSF departments – present at the remaining weekly conferences.
Going Nationwide
The initial success of ViSiPAP led Infosino to explore additional faculty exchanges with the Cleveland Clinic, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children and Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami.
In addition, with Jennifer K. Lee, MD, of Johns Hopkins, Infosino helped to create the a unique East Coast/West Coast ViSiPAP faculty exchange for the 2019-2020 academic year among UCSF, Children’s Hospital Colorado and Stanford on the west coast and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Children’s National and Johns Hopkins on the east coast. Rita Agarwal, MD has been instrumental in establishing this new faculty exchange at Stanford, as has Debnath Chatterjee, MD at Children’s Hospital Colorado. In the exchange, each program chooses one pediatric anesthesia faculty to travel to a host institution on the opposite coast as a visiting professor. The east coast faculty is a visiting professor at all three west coast institutions and the west coast faculty is a visiting professor at all three east coast institutions. One of the additional goals of this East Coast/West Coast ViSiPAP faculty exchange is to provide opportunities for women and underrepresented in medicine (UIM) faculty to engage in activities that help with academic promotion and promotion to leadership positions.
Infosino believes the program’s growth indicates how valuable it has become for pediatric anesthesia, both at UCSF and beyond – and believes that other divisions and academic medicine departments can use the program as a model. He says, “Not only have ViSiPAP and the weekly fellow’s conference significantly increased the academic activity and the level of didactics in our own pediatric anesthesia division, but the ViSiPAP faculty exchanges have also helped to establish a pediatric anesthesia community among the faculty in the participating institutions that continues to grow.”