This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Education, service initiatives help POSNA make a global impact on pediatric care

The 28-year-old organization has grown rapidly during the last 5 years.

Issue: August 2012

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Since its establishment in 1984, the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America has been considered the leading pediatric orthopedic society worldwide. Through educational and service programs, members are dedicated to improving pediatric musculoskeletal health care across the globe.

“[The Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America] is the primary educational venue for exchange of ideas in pediatric orthopedics,” Peter O. Newton, MD, president of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA), told Orthopedics Today.

“Although the name is the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America, it has developed a global impact,” Newton, a clinical professor in the department of orthopedic surgery at the University of California, San Diego, and practices at Rady Children’s Hospital, said. “It is seen around the world as the premier pediatric orthopedic association.”

To obtain POSNA membership, an orthopedic surgeon must dedicate 75% of his or her practice to the care of children and adolescents. Because of dramatic growth in this area over the years, the society now has 1,182 members.

“In the last 5 years, we have grown faster than we have done throughout our entire history,” John M. Flynn, MD, POSNA vice president and associate chief of orthopedic surgery and associate chief of trauma surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said.

 

The second annual meeting of the POS took place at the Mayo Clinic in 1972. Shown are (front row) Douglas McKay, MD; Bill Green Jr., MD, Anthony Bianco, MD; George Lloyd-Roberts, MD; Burr Curtis, MD; Dean McEwen, MD; Robert B. Winter, MD; Howard H. Steel, MD; (back row) William F. Donaldson, MD; Sherman S. Coleman, MD; Arthur M. Pappas, MD; Wood W. Lovell, MD; John E. Hall, MD; Mihan O. Tachdjian, MD; Frank H. Stelling III, MD.

Images: POSNA

A merger of societies

The numbers of pediatric orthopedic surgeons in North America have not always been so robust.

“In about 1969, there were approximately nine orthopedic surgeons who spent pretty much full time with children’s orthopedic problems,” Hugh G. Watts, MD, former POSNA historian and clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, said. “They decided it would be an interesting idea to get their heads together and see what they could learn from each other.” They called the group the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society (POS), he noted.

Initially, the POS “felt that they wanted to be somewhat exclusive” and limit their membership, Watts, who is also on staff at the Shriners Hospital for Children, Los Angeles, said. “They did not want to have a bunch of people who were not all that knowledgeable about pediatric orthopedic problems. They wanted to discuss [the specialty] amongst experts.” Therefore, invitations to join the POS were only sent to one surgeon in each well-known pediatric orthopedic institution, he said.

Meanwhile, some younger orthopedists excluded from the POS created their own organization called the Pediatric Orthopaedic Study Group.

Eventually, redundancies in the memberships and missions made it clear that the two groups should merge. They unified in 1984 as the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society, and 1 year later the organization changed its name to the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America, for legal reasons.

Education as a primary mission

The primary mission of POSNA is to educate its membership, Newton said. Constantly improving the annual meeting has been critical to achieving this goal.

“We have improved our annual meeting to address the increasing subspecialty interest in our field,” Flynn said. “There are more members who identify themselves as being experts in the field of pediatric orthopedics who are also experts in sports medicine, tumors or spine. We renovated our educational mission to welcome people subspecializing within the field of pediatric orthopedics.”

Another way POSNA improved its meeting was to shorten the length of presentations to facilitate attendee and faculty discussions.

“We were one of the earliest groups to shorten podium presentations to encourage discussion,” Vernon T. Tolo, MD, a POSNA past president, told Orthopedics Today. “It gave us a chance to have more questions from the audience and more discussion rather than just having the speaker present.” Tolo is also chief emeritus, Children’s Orthopaedic Center and the John C. Wilson, Jr. professor of orthopedics, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California.

The International Pediatric Orthopaedic Symposium (IPOS), a joint meeting between POSNA and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), is also important to POSNA’s educational mission.

“The IPOS meeting is an international meeting that is designed for pediatric orthopedic surgeons. It is a high-level meeting,” Chad T. Price, MD, professor orthopedic surgery at the University of Central Florida, College of Medicine, said. “It is not a review. It is a state-of-the-art conference.”

According to Price, initially, the IPOS meeting provided a pediatric orthopedics focus. “It was the first course of its type that was purely focused on children’s orthopedics,” he said.

The meeting offers large symposium discussions with an extensive, knowledgeable faculty. It is more interactive than traditional meetings, Price said, with the program featuring many small-group breakout discussions.

“The registrants are almost as equally qualified [as the faculty]. It is a dynamic meeting,” he said.

 

Taken in 1980, the number of people in this photo indicates the rapid growth that the POS underwent prior to the formation of the POSNA in 1984.

Help to those in need

POSNA members are also dedicated to service, as demonstrated through the organization’s most popular committee, the Children’s Orthopedics in Underserved Regions (COUR) Committee, established in 1999.

“There’s been a broad interest in helping less developed countries on the part of pediatric orthopedic surgeons,” Watts said. “They go all over the world. It has been enormously successful.”

The work of the COUR Committee goes beyond performing surgeries in foreign countries.

“They do far more than travel to an interesting part of the world and operate for a week and come home,” Newton said. “They develop incredible formal, educational and treatment programs,” he said.

For example, POSNA member Shafique P. Pirani, MD, developed a clubfoot educational program in Uganda, where he worked with the government to establish clinics and training facilities wherein hundreds of people learned how to effectively cast and treat clubfeet. Pirani received the AAOS Humanitarian Award for those efforts.

In addition to its programs throughout Africa and in Haiti, the COUR Committee is developing educational programs in Afghanistan, India, South and Central America, according to Newton.

Another important POSNA program is the safety, quality and value initiative.

“We are, as an organization, way out in the forefront for quality, safety and value,” Flynn said. Working closely with the AAOS, “we are trying to look closely at what we are doing in terms of safety. We are trying to measure benchmarks for quality pediatric orthopedic health care, such as infection rates for certain procedures or complication rates. We are trying to get quality data nationwide, establish these benchmarks and then try to drive those complication rates down by instituting programs,” he said.

Future challenges

The society faces some challenges, such as balancing the needs of the pediatric orthopedic surgeon superspecialist and the generalist.

“We all acknowledge that how to manage superspecialist and the generalist is something that POSNA needs to be aware of, to provide opportunities for both individuals,” Newton said.

POSNA also plans to continue expanding its international outlook, he said. The group will cultivate collaborative relationships with other organizations, such as the South American Pediatric Orthopaedic Society, European Pediatric Orthopaedic Society and Asia-Pacific Orthopaedic Association. Furthermore, the society will continue to promote the quality, safety and value initiative, Newton said. “We think that will be an important agenda for us in the future.”

In addition, POSNA will remain focused on its younger members.

“We continue to work hard to provide mechanisms for our younger members to be successful as clinician-scientists should they wish to do that,” Newton said. – by Colleen Owens