A Word from Membership By Wade Smith, MD, PhD
I would like to introduce myself as your new
chair of the Membership Committee and
secretary of NCS. I was one of the founding
members who asked Dr. Tom Bleck to be
our first president, making him the eighth
member. Who knew in 2002 that, 15 years
later, we would have 2,276 members. We have
come a long way. And fewer than half (43
percent) of these members are physicians,
revealing our true multidisciplinary focus; nurses make up 16
percent and pharmacists 7 percent. We now have 7 percent
international members as the NCS appears to be meeting the
needs of many international medical professionals. As part of our
educational mission, NCS provides several educational products
(PONS, ENLS, with NCS-Live and podcasts coming soon); we
sponsor fellowships; we provide a platform that brings our
industry leaders to you at our national meeting; and we provide
advocacy to Washington, D.C. We want our members to bring
their cutting-edge research to our annual meeting and publish in
the Neurocritical Care journal. All these efforts are paying off with a
society that provides many of the needs each member seeks.
I am all ears as to what is working and what needs improvement.
Please email me with any suggestions about membership
resources, including pricing. If you are excited about our society,
please help recruit members from your own institution or research
colleagues that you have across the country. If you have been a
member and have not renewed, please tell me why. Was it the time
commitment, the cost or something else? For our international
members, thank you for spreading the word. ENLS has been
translated to Japanese and Spanish in response to your needs, so
please tell us more.
It is not just about the numbers. For those of you who have
been with us and have volunteered for various positions within
the society, I am recommending that we ask you if you would
be willing to participate in future focus groups for missioncritical
decisions. This could include surveys, email exchanges
or a conference call or two to provide your opinion(s) regarding
advertising issues, thoughts about new products, branding and
communications, among other things. I know that there are
several of you who have volunteered but were not asked to do
something; this may be a way for the society to gain from your
input. More about this later.
I welcome your input.
Wade Smith, MD, PhD
Professor of Neurology, UCSF
Secretary, Neurocritical Care Society
wade.smith@ucsf.edu
4
