Why Meetings Like SPD 2024 Are Important for Advancing Pediatric Dermatology

At the Society for Pediatric Dermatology 2024 Annual Meeting, speakers from a variety of presentations discussed why meetings like this one are important for improving the pediatric dermatology space in the future. The American Journal of Managed Care^® spoke with:

• Rebecca Flynn, MSN, APRN, CPNP-PC, a nurse practitioner at Children's Mercy Kansas City Dermatology
• Timothy Caulfield, JD, professor in the Faculty of Law in the School of Public Health and research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta
• Kelly Harris, APRN, an advanced practice registered nurse at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
• James Treat, MD, a pediatric dermatologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
• Nichole Halliburton, APRN, CNP, a family nurse practitioner at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
• Peter Lio, MD, a dermatologist and clinical assistant professor at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine
• Faye Brown, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, a family nurse practitioner at the University of Colorado School of Medicine

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Transcript

Why are meetings like SPD 2024 important for the advancement of pediatric dermatology?

Flynn: I think it's critical to have an exchange of ideas. Anytime we can gather together and see how you're utilizing your clinic and different diagnoses and new tools within your practice, because we're all serving the same types of patients, same types of diseases, even if we're thousands of miles apart. I always try to take back 1 or 2 new ideas that I can implement in my clinic or share with my colleagues who were not able to attend the conference. So I think it's very important to bring back those fresh ideas.

I also love being able to network with my advanced practice providers that are doing the same thing I'm doing every single day in clinic, even if we're states apart, or on different sides of the country, we face the same challenges.

And we're able to relate in a way that I'm not able to relate with other advanced practice providers in a different area of medicine. So I love that time that we can spend together. Even though we might only see each other once or twice a year, we're able to network outside of conference time. So you always feel like you're reuniting when you come back together and having that network time to support each other while you're at conference together or while you're back at your home area performing care.

Caulfield: A meeting like this, I think is so, so important, because it allows us to get together and talk about these issues and to build momentum around important topics. I hope my involvement with this event did that in some small way. But you can feel the energy, right. And I think it helps build strong science-informed action for the future.

Harris: These meetings are so important, because there's not very many of us, and I think a lot of us are doing very important, very cool things. And it's just a great way to come together, share ideas, share what we're doing, and really learn from each other and continue to advance this profession.

Treat: The SPD is a phenomenal place to be able to share ideas and to get energized to basically go out and take as good care of children as possible and learn from all of our phenomenal colleagues who are both empathetic and brilliant and just do a wonderful job of actually improving the health care of children.

Halliburton: We all need the chance to share our ideas, innovations, and failures in order to learn from one another. Patient care remains our focus at all times and we want to do the best we can for every patient that we see. These meetings also allow us to network with other dermatologic professionals with specific areas of expertise. So going forward we can contact the expert as needed with regards to recommendations for disease-specific interventions.

Lio: Pediatric dermatology is unique. It really is an area that has some special ideas and concepts and its own sets of problems. And I think we're lucky it attracts some really creative, brilliant clinicians. So to bring everybody together in a smaller space where we can really focus on the issues that are particular to taking care of kids and their families, that is different. At most of the general dermatology stuff, there's often a little carve out for [pediatrics]. But here it is the star of the show, and I would argue as it should be.

Brown: I always joke it's probably one of the most fascinating meetings you can actually ever attend as a health care provider. You are genuinely surrounded by some of the most brilliant minds on the face of this earth. From increasing our knowledge on evidence-based practice guidelines to what are our updates and research, what's in the pipeline for our specialty. It's really quite incredible.