The Academic Surgeon - Official Blog of the AAS

The Academic Surgeon is the official blog of the AAS. We post anywhere from one to three times a week and our contributors will focus on issues relevant to young academic surgeons, residents, fellows, and even medical students.

If you would like to contribute, please submit your post here: https://www.aasurg.org/the-academic-surgeon-blog-submission/

AAS Committees-Phase 2 Nominations Open & Phase 1 Selections Announced

AAS Committees – Phase 2 Self-Nominations Open We are currently accepting self-nominations for the Ethics, Global Affairs, Committee on Technology and Communications, Leadership and Membership Committees. If you are interested in serving, please visit https://www.aasurg.org/nominations for more information, including descriptions of committees. To self-nominate, please log into your account. Self-nominations must be submitted online by 11:59 PM CST on November …

Open Source in Academic Surgery

“Open source” has become nothing less than a revolutionary intellectual movement, arising from the software development community. All software is provided as traditional “binary” programs that run on computers, mobile devices and on web sites, but open source software also distributes the source code that makes the programs work. Other programmers are then free to …

International Visiting Professorship Award Winners

We take great honor in announcing the winners of the 2020 International Visiting Professorship (IVP) Awards. The award winners will be continuing the ongoing relationship among AAS and the international community. Vikas Dudeja, MD received the Taiwan Surgical Association IVP Vikas Dudeja is Associate Professor of Surgery and Surgeon-Scientist at University of Miami. His clinical practice …

Predatory Journals

Be sure to join the next #AASChat happening on Tuesday, September 24th at 8 pm Eastern – the discussion topic will be Predatory Journals, and our moderator will be Dr. Abbey Fingeret [@DrFingeret]. Introduction If you have ever published a paper that has your email address on it, these solicitations are nearly impossible to escape: …

AAS Merch 2020 – What Would You Wear?

We know our members take pride in our Association… So what would you put an AAS logo on? A shirt? A hat? A tracksuit for your cat? CLICK HERE and give us your ideas. AAS members will vote and the winning swag will be on sale at ASC 2020. Tell us what you want to …

The Importance of Mentorship

As you move forward in your career, you can’t help but notice the importance of mentorship. Finding the right mentorship is key to a successful career. Oftentimes, you will have multiple mentors, not just one. Having a good mentor can certainly enhance your success. Mentorship is needed at all stages of your professional growth. When …

Change Is Inevitable—How Will You Respond?

July 1st marks the start of the academic surgery calendar and with it comes change. Chief residents are graduating and moving on to new jobs or fellowship positions. New interns are welcomed into the program, residents are moving in and out of the research years, and faculty are being hired, promoted or recruited away. In …

When it Looks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck, but isn’t a Duck: Being Wary of Cognitive Bias in Everyday Practice

We make decisions every day both for ourselves and our patients, yet we seldom think about how we make these decisions. In medicine, we consider data and evidence, leaving aside emotion and influence in favor of rationality. Cognitive bias, a systematic error in thinking, can sneak in and influence us. Cognitive bias is relatively unstudied …

Publications Committee – Reviewers of the Year!

Each year the AAS Publications Committee reviews hundreds of manuscripts submitted to be considered for presentation at the Academic Surgical Congress. The review work is detailed and very time consuming – we are grateful for the tremendous amount of work our committee members accomplish, and it is with great pleasure that we present and congratulate …

Modern Applications of Causal Attribution in Medicine

Bernard Weiner’s theory of social behavior posits that we respond to events by judging its cause, leading to the assignment of responsibility, emotional reaction, and the ultimate response (Weiner, 2006). When Dr. Ernest Codman, a graduate of Harvard Medical School in 1895 and an advocate for improved patient outcomes, presented the concept of morbidity and …