ACS to host high school students from the Bay Area on Oct. 26

The American College of Surgeons (ACS) will host dozens of high school students from the Bay Area on Wednesday, October 26, at its annual Clinical Congress taking place next week at San Francisco's Moscone Center. The ACS Division of Education has invited the students to "A Day with the American College of Surgeons" in response to the under-representation of African Americans and Hispanic Americans in the surgical profession. The Clinical Congress is one of the largest meetings of surgeons in the world and features hundreds of scientific presentations highlighting research in progress in all surgical specialties.

The ACS High School Program was developed 10 years ago to introduce African American, Hispanic American, and other under-represented minority high school students to careers in medicine and surgery at a point in their lives when they are formulating plans for the future, and at a time when African Americans and Hispanic Americans make up only a small number of the physicians and surgeons in the United States.

This event provides students with an opportunity to interact with surgeon mentors and learn more about the profession, including what motivated their mentors to become surgeons and how people from a variety of backgrounds can achieve successful careers in surgery. David Tom Cooke, MD, FCCP, FACS, a cardiothoracic surgeon from University of California, Davis Medical Center who grew up in the Oakland area, will be a featured speaker. Another highlight of the day is the opportunity for the students to tour the exhibit floor in the convention center, where over 200 companies display products or services developed to improve the quality of surgical patient care, including surgical robots and lasers.

Students will also have a chance to try their hand at surgery in a demonstration provided by James "Butch" Rosser, MD, FACS, titled "Top Gun Laparoscopic Skills and Suturing," an interactive program used to train surgeons to operate without opening the patient. (Laparoscopic surgery is done with long instruments and a camera inserted into the abdomen through specialized ports, while the surgeon looks at a video monitor which displays the intra-abdominal image.)

Keith D. Amos, MD, FACS, assistant professor of surgery at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who has worked to organize the event for ACS, said the program is important because "it brings together high school students interested in careers in medicine and science with surgeons from across the country. It is my belief that this experience will inspire these young students and help them to better understand the pathways to become future doctors and scientists."