2024 – Colin Martin – James IV Association of Surgeons

It is an honor and privilege to have received the James IV Travelling Fellowship award. Because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I had to delay travel until July of 2022. I used the funds to travel to visit Great Ormand Street Children’s Hospital in London England. Next, I attended Birmingham, UK and participated in the 2022 British Association of Pediatric Surgery (BAPS) meeting from July 13^th-15^th 2022. The final stop of the trip was to visit Edinburgh Scotland hosted by Professor Steve Wigmore.

Visit to Great Ormand Street Hospital (GOSH). I had an opportunity to visit one of the most iconic and historic Children’s Hospital in the world. Since its formation in 1852, the hospital has been dedicated to children’s healthcare. GOSH receives 242,694 outpatient visits and 42,112 inpatient visits every year. My visit was hosted by Paolo De Coppi. Dr. De Coppi is a Consultant Pediatric Surgeon at GOSH, Head of Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at the UCL Institute of Child Health in London. I had a chance to tour the clinical wards in the hospital. It was very interesting to tour and visit the neonatal intensive care unit. It was large with several babies with necrotizing enterocolitis and intestinal failure. I have clinical expertise with both of these conditions which lead to very nice bi-directional exchange on the differences in surgical care between our two countries. Finally I had a chance to give a scientific talk to the entire Department of Surgery on my research and clinical interests. The talk was titled “Environmental Stress and Intestinal Development.” It was well received.

British Association of Pediatric Surgery (BAPS) Program Highlights: BAPS was established in 1953 with a mission to raise standards in pediatric surgery through education and research. The meeting in Birmingham, UK was the 68^th meeting. It was a fantastic to attend. It was similar to other US and international meetings that I have attended in the past. There was a robust scientific program with invited lectures, as well as ample opportunities for social networking. One difference with this program were the snacks and refreshments after each session. By the end of the meeting, I developed an affinity for tea with milk! The program started with a welcome and opening remarks by the BAPS President Munther Haddad. This was then followed by the Prize Session. This is analogous to a plenary session with long talks given by the top abstracts submitted to the program. There was a mix of basic science and clinical topics. There were 10 talks in the session and my favorite was titled: Common Dendritic Progenitors are Responsible for Tolerance Induction Following in Utero Transplantation. This talk was given by Joseph Davidson with mentorship from Great Ormand Street Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The basic science was presented concisely with tangible clinical relevance. There was also a session dedicated to Urology. In the UK many of the pediatric surgeons have extensive urology training and incorporate this into their practice. This is quite unique in the United States and I learned a lot from this session. There was also a research breakout session that focused on conducting qualitative and quantitative research. The topics and speakers were: Dr Beth Deja (University of Liverpool) – Qualitative research – What? Why? and How? Professor Kerry Woolfell (University of Liverpool) – Using qualitative research to determine the feasibility of clinical trials Dr Lisa Hinton (University of Cambridge) – Using parent experience as a tool for education, service improvement and understanding outcomes. This was an amazing session. I am starting to do qualitative research and from this session I got a

basic understanding of the tools needed to conduct research in this space. The final highlight of the meeting was the Journal of Pediatric Surgery Lecturer Dr. Marc Levit. Dr. Levitt is a Pediatric Surgeon and the Head of Colorectal Surgery at Children’s National Medical Center in the United States. His talk was titled: Patient Driven Change; Is collaborative care the future of medicine? (Lessons learned from the care of children with colorectal problems). Dr. Levitt gave a compelling talk on his internationally renowned colorectal program. Dr. Levitt was one of my mentors during residency at the University of Cincinnati. I had a chance to reconnect and have lunch with him. It was great to catch up and he gave me good mentoring advice.

Visit of Birmingham Children’s Hospital. I had a chance to visit Birmingham Children’s Hospital in the UK. The tour was given by Dr. Suren Arul who is the Division Chief of Pediatric Surgery and Urology. He spoke about the history of the hospital as well as gave us a tour of the hospital including the many new renovations and state of the art equipment. Birmingham Children’s is also the national referral center for liver transplantation. Hearing about the program and clinical volume was very impressive. We also toured the operating rooms and the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units.

Edinburgh Scotland. The final stop on our trip was a visit to Edinburgh hosted by Professor Steve Wigmore who is the head of the Hepatobiliary-Pancreatic Surgical Services and Edinburgh Transplant Unit Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and Professor Wigmore have hosted several James IV visit which added an additional value to the visit. I spent 3 days visiting this hospital, round with the team, and observing a few operative cases. Finally I had a chance to visit the surgeons Museum. Surgeons’ Hall Museums is an award winning Museum that is home to one of the largest and most historic pathology collections in the United Kingdom. The Museums are currently home to an extensive collection of pathology, anatomy and medical memorabilia. There was an extensive display surgical history and artifacts dating back hundreds of years. It was quite fascinating.

Again, thank you for this opportunity. It was certainly the highlight of my career! Best,

Colin A. Martin, MD

Brad and Barbara Warner Endowed Professor of Surgery Division Chief, Pediatric Surgery

Washington University in Saint Louis

Surgeon-in-Chief, St. Louis Children’s Hospital