The 2024 Association of Program Directors in Vascular Surgery (APDVS) convened in Chicago April 5–6 for their annual spring meeting, which held the record for the highest-attended in APDVS history.
APDVS 2024 covered important topics for vascular surgery program directors, including the roles for coaching in program director positions, in-person versus virtual interviews for residency, the evolving curricula for vascular surgery trainees, the pros and cons of artificial intelligence and simulation in vascular surgery training, and more. Most of the sessions took place on April 5, culminating on April 6 with the annual business meeting where leadership bade farewell to Jason Lee, MD, as APDVS president, and Malachi Sheahan III, MD, as secretary-treasurer.
“It has been an absolute privilege and honor of mine to serve the APDVS and complete my term as president out of the [COVID-19] pandemic,” said Lee, who spent his term focusing on the educational environment for trainees and empowering program directors.
“Our terms began with an existential threat to our training programs,” commented Sheahan on the COVID-19 pandemic. “Quick coordination with the Vascular Surgery Board allowed for a case number waiver for any trainee unduly affected by the decreased number of elective procedures nationally. It is a testament to our training programs that not one graduate required the waiver. Our program directors also quickly adapted to virtual interviews, and rather than falter, vascular surgery became the fastest growing specialty in the Match in the years after the pandemic.”
Sheahan has been involved with the APDVS for more than 10 years and refers to his four-year term as APDVS secretary-treasurer as the honor of a lifetime.
During the four years of Lee’s leadership, two as president-elect and two as president, the APDVS covered a lot of ground, including the triumphs during the pandemic. Throughout that time, the APDVS studied impact and alternative recruitment issues through the VISIT (Vascular In-Person for Students in the Match Trial) study, developed new programs, increased curricular resources for trainees and program directors, and worked within the COVERS (Coalition for Optimization of Vascular Surgery Trainees and Students) group to improve recruitment in the vascular surgery field.
“I am proud of all we have done in the past four years and look forward to learning more. We need to continue listening to our program directors and trainees to make the specialty even better than it already is,” said Lee, expressing his gratitude for the volunteerism and professionalism that APDVS brings to trainees.
The APDVS meeting concluded on April 6 with Dawn Coleman, MD, taking over as the next president. For more information, visit vascular.org/APDVS.
