Program Committee February 2021 Update

The 16th Annual International Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society Meeting took place virtually on December 9-11, 2020. Although the meeting was unable to take place in our usual location at the Loew’s hotel in Miami Beach, we are thrilled that we were able to pivot and offer the same high quality educational content using a virtual platform. Over 750 registrants from nearly 40 countries joined the lectures from the comfort of their home or office. The 3 days of the conference were packed with timely and important sessions, including conversations about equity, diversity, and innovations that have arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic. We applaud our speakers for presenting such open, honest, and sometimes difficult viewpoints that really encouraged all of us to think seriously about the future of our field. Our speaker panel represented a wide range of backgrounds, including parents, administrators, physicians and nurses. Furthermore, with our virtual presence, we had live speakers from all over the world, including one panel that had speakers from five different continents at the same time! During the nursing and junior faculty/fellows post-conference sessions, panel speakers encouraged the next generation of providers through personal discussion of topics pertaining to career development and sustainability, hard lessons learned by those who have been in the field for some time, and concerns shared regarding issues of mental health and burnout. By sharing their own personal experiences, our speakers shared insight on these topics that are rarely discussed openly but remain critically important. The conference chat feed allowed all participants the opportunity to ask questions and interact with our esteemed speakers and other audience members and it helped promote the networking that we all love about our in-person meetings. High quality scientific abstracts were submitted and presented either as recorded posters or as top oral presentations, and attendees had the opportunity to view the posters in the virtual poster hall and participate in discussions about the science with the authors and other audience members. We would like to recognize and extend our sincere thanks to the sponsors of this meeting. We value the support of our sponsors for each and every meeting, but given the financial climate of 2020 due to COVID, we are especially thankful for all who chose to support the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society, our meeting, and the community we serve. If you missed the meeting but are still interested in viewing the content, it’s not too late! You can still register for the meeting and view the lectures through the end of January 2021.

Best,
Lindsey and Nikhil