Q & A with Dan Riew
Dan Riew tells us about the direction he plans to take AOSpine in during his years as AOSpine International Chairperson.
What attracted you to join the AOSpine community?
I was invited to a course in Davos, Switzerland as faculty. I thought that the course was really outstanding and I met a lot of top notch surgeons from all over the world. The combination of academic and social activities at the course allowed me to get to know and become friends with many of those surgeons. That’s what’s so attractive about AOSpine.
How would you summarize AOSpine’s progress over your past three years as our Research Chairperson?
Over the past three years, AOSpine has really taken a leadership role in producing some of the best research in spine. These include highly clinically impactful articles about spinal cord injury, myelopathy, management of spinal tumors, deformity surgery and complications, just to name a few. We are now recognized by all spine societies as an outstanding research organization.
Looking internally, we instituted a new system to determine the research productivity of the Knowledge Forums as well as the regions. We not only measured productivity but also looked at how much money was spent to achieve that productivity.
How would you like AOSpine to grow over the next three years?
Over the next three years, the guiding principle for AOSpine will be the acronym TEAM. This stands for Transparent, Egalitarian, Accountable and Meritocratic. Transparent because we want everyone to understand how AOSpine functions and why we do what we do. We want to be open about our decision-making process. Egalitarian means that we want to be as fair as practically possible and allow everyone equal access to the benefits that our organization can provide. Accountable means that we will begin to measure every aspect of how the organization is run. Just as we began using metrics to determine research output, we will devise and implement metrics to determine how effective we are in education and community development. Meritocratic means that performance metrics will help to determine resource allocation, leadership roles, involvement as faculty, and more.
We will try to apply the TEAM approach to everything that we do in our organization. I believe that this is the best way to take AOSpine to the next level. We are already considered ONE of the top spine organizations in the world; I want to see us become THE top spine organization in the world. I want to see us grow the membership every year and in every region, and to become the top educational and research organization in the world.
What do you think makes AOSpine and its educational, research and community development offerings so unique?
With over 6,000 spine surgeons in our membership, we are one of the biggest, if not the biggest organizations for spine surgeons. Further, we are very fortunate that AOSpine includes in its membership virtually every key opinion leader, top educator and researcher in every region in the world. This allows us to have the best faculty for our educational events. But is not just about our faculty. AOSpine consulted with the leading thinkers and innovators in adult education to come up with a style of teaching that is utilized in all of our courses. Instead of having the speakers drone on for an extended period of time, as is done in most courses, we break up courses with case presentations, short lectures, discussions, expert commentary and case solutions. That's why it's rare to see someone sleeping during one of our courses!
As for research, our Knowledge Forums have become highly productive and have engaged the top spine researchers. These are open to anyone with a strong track record in research and who can contribute cases for our clinical studies. Last but not least, in community development we have an abundance of web-based learning, as well as clinical tools, access to OVID and Global Spine Journal, which recently incorporated Evidenced Based Spine Journal.
What have you gained or learned from your involvement with AOSpine?
AOSpine has given me the opportunity to connect with surgeons from all over the world. This allows me to tap into the wealth of experience and knowledge that international thought leaders can provide. I’ve learned that spine surgeons all over the world have similar concerns and desires about our profession. We want to do what is best for our patients. We want to know about the latest in surgical techniques. We want to access information from the leading thinkers in the field. We want highly informative, interesting and engaging educational events. And we want all of these as efficiently and economically as possible. I think that many people will agree that there is not another spine organization that can do these things better than AOSpine.
