FALL 2003

Editor: Tanvir Choudhri, MD Associate Editors: Gavin Britz, MD Jonathan Friedman, MD In This Issue... From the Chair From the Editor YNC Update YNC Careers YNC Outlook YNC Clinical YNC Review AANS Educational Programs Beyond Residency: The Real World Course The Chicago Review Course AANS Annual Meeting Update Your E-mail Address Young Neurosurgeons' News Index Young Neurosurgeons' Home

From the Editor:
Building on Success

Tanvir Choudhri, MD

Since its inception in 1991, the Young Neurosurgeons Committee of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) has grown in size and relevance, with strong YNC leadership and significant support from the AANS. This growth is demonstrated in the breadth and depth of YNC activities. Since it began in the fall of 1999, the YNC newsletter Young Neurosurgeons' News has grown under the leadership of Mark McLaughlin, MD (editor, Fall 1999-Spring 2001), Brian Subach, MD (editor, Fall 2001-Spring 2003), the assistant editors, and the YNC leadership.

With great respect for my predecessors, I begin as editor of the newsletter for the next two years. I am pleased to be joined in this endeavor by associate editors Jonathan Friedman, MD, and Gavin Britz, MD, as well the YNC leadership. With this team, we plan to build on past successes with new initiatives. The content will be organized into a new format with the following sections:

YNC Update: The newsletter will continue to serve as the voice of the YNC with messages from the YNC chair and editor, coverage of YNC events, and notices for future activities. Links to YNC meeting minutes and YNC liaison reports will be included.

YNC Careers: Our training programs and national meetings are appropriately focused on educating us on the skills and scientific knowledge to provide the foundation for and to enhance our neurosurgical practice. However, as most of us realize, building a successful academic or private practice career involves more than the science of neurosurgery. Through direct interviews and articles, this section will focus on these important but sometimes overlooked topics. For example, in a series entitled "How I Did It…" successful neurosurgeons will be interviewed to identify factors which they felt were essential to build their area(s) of success including their clinical practice, subspecialty focus, operative skills, academic reputation, and/or laboratory and grant efforts. Other articles will address the common struggle to achieve a reasonable balance between work and home.

YNC Outlook: Young neurosurgeons are busy building their practices and careers. As a result, it is often difficult to stay informed on crucial socioeconomic and legislative issues that directly and dramatically can affect and even threaten our practices and profession. Through the Bulletin and other avenues, the AANS provides a great service in educating us on these issues and hopefully sparks individual and collective participation in the process. In YNC Outlook, we will highlight these issues through summaries, updates, and links. As Dr. McLaughlin highlights in this issue's From the Chair column, at this time the medical liability issue should be front and center on our agenda as this appears to be a window of opportunity for meaningful tort reform which cannot be missed.

YNC Clinical: The practice of neurosurgery has always required the ongoing attention to clinical neurosurgical education. With the maintenance of certification initiative, this process is becoming more formalized. For many reasons, for our practice and oral board examination, young neurosurgeons particularly focus on neurosurgical education. In this section, we will address this with several new series including "Test Yourself," in which questions relevant to the practice clinical neurosurgery will be addressed. The answers will be available on the Web site for self-assessment. Where appropriate, there will be short focused discussions by experts in the topic area. "Images in Neurosurgery" will provide a forum to share important, unique, and/or classic neurosurgical images. Finally in "Clinical Controversies" there will be a forum to address clinical issues that do not have a clear answer. The readers are encouraged to contribute to these series by suggesting topics or providing items. With the newsletter now in a Web-based format, this section has room to grow and could be a valuable resource for young neurosurgeons.

YNC Review: This section will provide reviews of books, products, courses (for example, board review courses), and other items of interest. If there is interest, we may include reviews of restaurants, hotels, etc. in the host city for the corresponding upcoming national meeting.

YNC Feedback: In this section there will be opportunities for the readership to provide feedback on a variety of topics. In this issue, there is an important questionnaire on topics that young neurosurgeons want the YNC to focus on. Please take the time to complete and fax or mail this in. Future questionnaires will address clinical, socioeconomic, and other issues. The results will be posted in the subsequent issue. We will work to someday have direct electronic entry of feedback with more timely presentation of results.

Through this newsletter, we will try to help advance initiatives of the YNC and the AANS such as increasing the presence of our international colleagues, pursuing tort reform, and supporting the annual YNC Silent Auction to benefit the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation. Hopefully, with the combined efforts of the editorial staff, YNC leadership, AANS staff, and neurosurgical community we will continue to provide relevant content which focuses on the needs of young neurosurgeons including recent graduates, fellows, residents, and medical students interested in neurosurgery. Our success will be determined by the contributions and feedback of all the above groups and we look forward to your participation. Please contact me directly, tanvir.choudhri@mountsinai.org, to comment or contribute.