Associate Editor’s Message: Critical Care Without Borders

I am delighted to welcome y’all to the Summer 2022 edition of the PCICS Newsletter. Summer travel this year has been impacted by the high prices, long lines at the airports, and staff shortages across the airline industry (we all know a thing or two about understaffing). However, worry not – our Editorial team is here to give you a different kind of travel and tour experience – one that doesn’t involve credit card swiping, waiting in security lines, or the worry about canceled flights. Welcome to the PCICS Newsletter’s Global edition – where we shine the light on some beacons of pediatric cardiac care across the world, to broaden our horizons and learn something new.

The PCICS is proud to be the home of pediatric cardiac critical care providers across the world. As the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, it also opened other channels of communication that helped us connect farther and wider than before. International webinars attended by providers from multiple continents, Whatsapp text groups exchanging clinical lessons learned throughout the pandemic, and electronic resources built for wide dispersal – these are just a few lessons that our field can (and does) continue to leverage as we seek to advance the care of the child with heart disease no matter where they are born.

As a pediatric cardiac intensivist who trained in northern India, helped develop echocardiography training in a children’s ward in Malawi, and currently works in Houston caring for children who have traveled from or been referred from across the globe, this edition is one exceptionally near and dear to my heart. From Chandigarh to Houston, by way of New Delhi and Cincinnati, I have witnessed the positive impacts of an exchange of ideas leading to an implementation of a new game-changing practices at each of the places I have worked at. We all have something to learn from each other, no matter how ‘advanced’ or ‘developed’ our center is. With that in mind, we invited a diverse range of authors, physicians and nurses, cardiologists, anesthesiologists, and surgeons, to share their experience. How did they decide to be an international champion of pediatric cardiac care? What is a convention or practice they successfully challenged at their center? How did international collaboration help their center develop and what can some newer or growing centers learn from this experience? These are not medical missions – these are full-fledged programs doing incredible work in a variety of zipcodes that we are proud to highlight. Needless to say, the pearls of wisdom are many and our newsletter space is limited – so there will be a part II!!

We are all excited as we gear up for the in-person PCICS annual meeting later this year, where we can build and renew professional connections. And through this newsletter, we hope to introduce the PCICS community to some international leaders in the field, to help build even broader connections and collaborations and bring us all together as we pursue our common medical mission. We have included email addresses in the editorials, and all our authors welcome questions, comments, and correspondence. And we are excited for all of you to launch into this country-hopping jaunt through cardiac ICUs far and wide!

Happy reading, and see you at the meeting!