Periop Leader Week, which for the first 39 years of its existence was the OR Manager Conference, will take place this Oct. 4 to 7 in Savannah, Ga. If you’ve already registered for the event, thank you! We can’t wait to see you there! If you haven’t, please kindly allow me a few minutes to encourage you, and every perioperative leader, to attend.
Our goal with our rebranded event is to enhance your experience in numerous ways that we believe you’ll appreciate. Specifically:
There are many great surgery-focused conferences out there. Almost all of them, however, are built around a single surgical specialty, job role or setting. Periop Leader Week, by contrast, is built for leaders at every level of perioperative services.
That’s ultimately why we rebranded OR Manager Conference to Periop Leader Week. OR managers are obviously important and our conference continues to serve those who work in that crucial role. But the breadth of perioperative leadership extends far beyond the OR.
Our program is intentionally leadership-focused, uniting clinical leaders, operational leaders, and business leaders in the perioperative space. For better or worse, surgery in the United States is a business. Perioperative clinical, operational and business leaders must be holistically aware of each other and of the totality of surgical services while professionally collaborating on at-times conflicting goals. To reduce it to a very high-level view: Surgery must be safe and effective, but it also must be performed efficiently and, if at all possible, turn a profit.
That applies no matter where perioperative leaders work – ASCs, academic medical centers, children’s hospitals, acute care hospitals, rural hospitals, community hospitals, health systems, joint ventures…the list goes on and on. Our program delivers integrated insights for every surgical setting. Our educational programming acknowledges and embraces scale…and scalability. It focuses on commonalities and universal truths while drilling down into site-specific variabilities as well.
We’ve heard it time and again from the leaders with whom we speak: Perioperative leaders of all types must be on the same page to ensure everyone’s success. Our guiding principle in building Periop Leader Week, then, is to connect leaders at every level and role in perioperative services to gain shared insight and understanding, develop cross-functional connections, and build collective strength to move surgery forward ... together.
Our educational sessions go beyond research and theory. They focus on what’s happening in today’s real world of surgery, with an eye firmly on tomorrow as well. Through case study presentations, diverse panel discussions, peer-to-peer interactions and more, we want you to return home with a boatload of expert advice and insight from your peers, immediately implementable solutions, and tons of ideas to make your perioperative services more efficient, safer, more effective and more profitable. We want you to return home feeling inspired and equipped to affect positive change at your facilities.
Many of us are familiar with the term “death by PowerPoint” when it comes to educational sessions at conferences. Now, we still love a great PowerPoint, and many of our presenters will be using them. But the guiding principle of Periop Leader Week, and one that has been embraced by all of our presenters, is interactivity.
With our PowerPoint-led case studies and other singular presentations, Periop Leader Week session attendees won’t just sit passively in an “audience” hour after hour. Our presenters are encouraged and excited to interact with those in their sessions as they go, answering questions, presenting scenarios, asking what you’re up to at your facility. And there will be plenty of Q&A time built into the ends of those sessions.
Many other sessions will consist of panels of your peers, again focused on free-flowing discussions that embrace interaction with those in attendance. Our peer-to-peer roundtables, meanwhile, are all about you and your fellow session attendees. In those sessions, a peer moderator will propose various avenues of discussion around a topic over an hour, with the goal of you and your peers doing most of the talking.
Even if you’re more of an introvert than an extrovert, you’ll gain a lot from hearing what your peers are saying…and you might make some new friends along the way.
Some people go to conferences just for the educational sessions, and that’s fine. But we’ve spent a lot of time and thought on designing and programming our expo space, which we call the Periop Networking & Innovation Hall. Our exhibitors are focused on existential issues that matter to you: surgical workflow, staffing, supply chain, data awareness and analysis, scheduling and more, along with the latest and greatest medical devices and equipment.
But that’s not all. You’ll be able to get education (and CEs) directly from vendors in the Hall, along with some additional editorial mini-sessions. At our topical, moderator-led lunchtime peer-to-peer roundtables in the Hall, you’ll have a chance to chat with your fellow diners further about topics that matter to you, sharing ideas and insights with each other as well as a meal. We’ll also have mixers where like-minded peers can get together to simply shoot the breeze and compare notes.
Periop Leader Week is built to deliver you as much professional development value per dollar as possible. We know budgets are tight, and it’s tough for many of you to step away from your work. That’s why we put together a program that doesn’t evoke the saying “this could have been an email, or a webinar.” With this inaugural Periop Leader Week, we are striving to create a compelling, inclusive and interactive in-person experience that you won’t want to miss.
We’re looking to establish a culture as much as a conference that extends throughout the year here on Periop Leader Network as well on your own professional network…until we all gather in person again in Fall 2027 (speaking of which, we’ll reveal the site of next year’s event soon).
We’re trying to build something important and special for perioperative leaders, and we want you to be part of the Periop Leader Week construction team. No hardhats required, though. Just badges, open minds eager to learn and connect, and a spirit of collaboration, mutual understanding and camaraderie that will lift everyone up.
Periop Leader Week is a shared project among all of us at Periop Leader Network and, most importantly, YOU. You have a central voice in how this event will evolve over the coming years. I’d love to hear from you about what you’d like to see and do at this year’s event, as well as next year’s. And of course, I’d love for you to contribute to Periop Leader Network year-round. I’m always open to discuss anything you’d like: jpaone@accessintel.com.
Well, that’s enough out of me. But I encourage you if you have the time and funding to join us in Savannah, Ga., this Oct. 4 to 7. Register today as an Attendee using code PLNVIP to get 15% off!
Thanks very much for reading, and I sincerely hope to meet you and provide you an unforgettable experience down in Savannah this fall!
Joe Paone
Content Director
Periop Leader Week and Periop Leader Network
